The UCLG Committee on Urban Strategic Planning has received a grant from CityFuture which enables them to follow up activities in Mozambique for mentoring. Furthermore, the Committee is exploring opportunities for possible joint activities with the Sustainable Cities network in Canada.

The annual CIB meeting for 2012 is scheduled 11- 12  June 2012  in Bergen (Norway). We kindly remind you to send the completed registration form before May 10.

More and more African countries are moving out of aid dependency as the private sector boosts economic growth on the continent. The domestic private sector becomes the engine of growth across much of Africa.

The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs has published a paper on local and national ownership in post-conflict Liberia. Difficulties in implementing policies aimed at fostering local and national ownership in peacekeeping activities have been the starting point of the paper, in which extra attention is paid to training programmes for those working in peacekeeping operations.

On 12 March, the EC published its Final Report on Thematic global evaluation of the Commission support to decentralisation processes. An evaluation was made to identify key relevant lessons and to provide recommendations to help ensure opportune and timely support to decentralisation processes. The evaluation looked at 77 countries that benefited from aid delivery in support of decentralization processes between 2000 and 2009.