Report :

I had the pleasure to participate in the international seminar on “Local Government and Civil Society” sponsored by the International Academy for Leadership (IAF) of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty. The seminar was held at the Theodor Heuss Akademie in Gummersbach, Germany from 26th October to 2nd of November, 2008. The seminar was attended by 23 participants representing four continents: African, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

The seminar focused on exploring several themes, such as: the importance of decentralization and subsidiarity; different models that bring together government with the private sector and the civil society organizations; privatization and effectiveness of service delivery; mechanisms for enhancing local funding; New public management and state effectiveness; and role of civil society and its impact on the decision making process at the local level. In doing so, the seminar used different methodologies to explore these issues like the usage of case studies, field visits, group discussion, simulation and formal presentations.

During the seminar, I was able to share the Egyptian experience and the challenges facing local administration in Egypt when moving towards fiscal, administrative, and political decentralization. In addition, I was able to present several case studies where Egyptian civil society organizations and private sector institutions were able to work hand in hand with local government and how that impacted on the effectiveness of the services provided and the customers’ satisfaction.

Among the most important lessons I learned from the seminar was: the importance of including citizens in the decision making process as it enhances citizens’ trust in local institutions; creating an environment for investment would have a major impact on local development, especially sound taxation policies; building coalitions and alliances is an essential tactic for politicians and interest groups; ignoring the opposition could have very negative implications for the relationship between the local government and its constituencies; and the importance of citizen participation during the election process as it is a main venue for insuring an accountable and responsive politics.

In my view, the most important outcome of this seminar was that it enabled me to review different experiences from other countries and assisted me to conclude that while every country has unique and specific conditions, there is also lots of common ground between different countries. Corruption, lack of transparency and inclusion of citizens is found everywhere, but in relative terms. Our ultimate end is to work within any given context to promote better governance and to advance the relationship between the different institutions at the different levels from one side, and the relationship between these institutions and their constituencies from the other side.