Imagine a land of “milk and honey” in a village where citizens access - potable water.

Imagine further, learners going to good schools with recommended teacher-learner ratios.

Imagine also, citizens challenging district council officials over corruption; where duty bearers learn to keep vigilant and be accountable to the empowered ordinary people.

Imagine these imaginations fading away into reality.

That is what Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD) project intends to achieve in the next five years of its implementation.

The project aims at revamping and improving council management, development planning, budget and project management in the best interest of ordinary citizens. 

Speaking to this Newsletter, NLGFC’s Capacity Development Specialist Robins Gausi said that GESD will immensely improve lives of people through empowering a local man to have a voice towards their own development.

“The uniqueness of this project is that a common man will be empowered to have voice in order to demand their own development.

This will be possible because the project development objective is to strengthen Local Authorities’ institutional performance, responsiveness to citizens, and management of resources for service delivery’, said Gausi.

He added that, GESD will also introduce a new Performance Based Grant (PBG) beginning 2021/2022 fiscal year.

District councils that perform well as measured by communities’ perception will receive more resources compared to those who perform poorly.

GESD will be facilitated by Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Local Government and implemented by the National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC). Other implementing partners include; Accountant General, Central Internal Audit Office, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development and Public Sector Reforms, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, National Audit Office, and Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority – in addition to key partnerships with Civil Society Actors.

the project has four components, Performance-Based Financing for Service Delivery, Inter-Governmental Accountability Systems, Performance Improvement Support and Adaptive Management and Innovation Support.

GESD is a K75 billion (100-million-dollar) project funded by World Bank to be implemented in all the 28 district councils in the country.