International Symposium on Governance and Local Development
From 11 to 13 February 2022, the African Local Government Academy of United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLG Africa), in partnership with Al Akhawayn University and the Geographical Union Commission (UGI), organized an international symposium in hybrid mode, under the theme “Governance and Local Development”. This symposium brought together about forty researchers from universities and practitioners from Africa, Europe and the United States of America (Morocco, France, England, Ghana, Ireland, Tanzania, USA, Tunisia and Cape Verde) to discuss issues related to local governance policies and current development strategies that can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The conference papers focused on the following issues:
– Thinking Big but Acting Local: A Reflective Assessment of Key National Initiatives
– What are we measuring and how? Data and indicators for local governance
– Citizenship and participatory governance: political and geographical dimensions
– Climate change and pandemics: resilience, mitigation and adaptation
– Territorial government and globalization.
The symposium provided an opportunity for participants to scientifically analyze Morocco’s various initiatives to reduce poverty and social inequality and provide essential services to marginalized communities. These include the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH), local development planning needs (Communal Development Plans), and more recently the New Development Model. Initiatives that offer great opportunities to reshape the spatial organization of regions, and to solve chronic local infrastructure and investment problems. It was also a question of drawing lessons from these similar experiences of Morocco in other countries of the South.
