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Introduction COPEGOL aims at discovering and promoting good local governance practices in Rwanda. This ambition is based on our belief that there are many practices around the country waiting to be recognized, supported, and shared with others, for the benefit of all. COPEGOL is one modest step to achieve this objective. COPEGOL wishes to encourage practices of governance that inspire and incite others to do better. Through this challenge, we hope to create excitement and enthusiasm around decentralisation and good local governance in Rwanda. A good local governance practice may take many forms and characters. In the core of the practice, though, always lies the intention to improve the way the locality operates to achieve developmental goals and increase the wellness of its citizens. These kinds of practices may appear in different local decision processes: planning, budgeting, service delivery, procurement, auditing, and monitoring-evaluation. The good practices rewarded by COPEGOL will be those that, in an inventive way, contribute to enhance transparency, increase participation, and/or improve accountability of those processes. They will also be those whose socio-economic impact can be demonstrated on all segments of population, including women, youth, the poor, and marginalized. Finally, COPEGOL will preferably prize durable practices, i.e. practices that should be sustainable over time, not depending on transient personalities or resources. Finding out and supporting good practices is important in many ways. First of all, those initiatives will serve as examples to other localities that face similar problems. In addition, this approach will allow for building on existing and locally-driven experiences to strengthen national policies, such as decentralisation. Since such practices are home-grown, initiated by local actors themselves, they are much more likely to suit the local needs and expectations as well as social, political, and cultural setting. Indeed, practitioners of local governance find their own solutions to concrete and specific problems they face in the daily management of local affairs. Those inventive practices can both inspire other local authorities and feed into the national policies so that they reflect innovative approaches developed by the local actors themselves. COPEGOL is the result of an ongoing World Bank project on improving local government transparency and accountability in Africa (LOGTAFA). It is a direct response to recommendations of our counterparts in three countries: Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Rwanda. Our stakeholders, both government and non-government, have continuously voiced a need for more action-oriented approach in improving local governance. They pushed us to go beyond the analytical study and provide incentives to local governments that work at promoting better governance. Following up on these recommendations, it was decided to institute a competition among local governments for good governance. As a consequence, COPEGOL was born. On Innovation Day, in November 2008, RALGA and MINALOC, in presence of all COPEGOL partners, will award the 6 highest-scoring practices by 2 districts and 4 sectors. We look forward to receiving your submission.  |
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