This activity focuses on the governance of towns.

It consists of:

• strengthening ‘the institutional arrangements of urban administrations and municipalities so that they will provide efficient and effective services to the people’;
• organizing and empowering people ‘to meaningfully participate from planning stage to execution and implementation; and … empowered to identify problems and solve the problems and be part of the solutions’.

COMMENTARY

Empowering people to provide good governance? The description of this activity acknowledges problems with the governance of urban centers in pastoral areas. The activity intends to identify and solve these problems by organizing and empowering people to do that themselves. While a genuine participatory/people-centered approach is certainly a positive turn, governance is a key function of the state, and the responsibility for good governance cannot be delegated to the people who are being governed.

f. Establish urban planning systems that strengthen the urban-rural and urban-urban linkages (p.63) »