Pilot Multi-Donor Seminar on Decentralisation Broadly Welcomed

Attendees and organisers welcomed a recent pilot seminar that brought together decentralisation specialists working at policy level and in the field as offering a valuable opportunity for exchange and cross-fertilisation of ideas.

The seminar, which took place earlier this year in Brussels, enabled the assembled donors to address the issue of decentralisation jointly for the first time as well as compare and contrast their training cultures in this field.

“You share a lot with the other donors,” said Susanne Wendt from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, DANIDA. “You share each other’s experiences and also it provides a good background for future work together because that’s eventually what we want in partner countries – to work together.”

Studying how different development partners can improve their cooperation and harmonise their activity was a central aspect of the seminar, and one that attendees appreciated.

“I thought it was a very good idea to bring all donors from different countries together in this training,” said Kristina Laarmann, a sector economist on decentralisation at the German investment bank KFW. “It was good for networking purposes but also to learn about the different approaches of all these donors.”

Many of the participants expressed an interest in more in-country or regional workshops and greater emphasis on gaining insights into political processes to help in their decision making. Organisers are committed to meeting those requests as best they can.

Organisers also plan to use the train4dev platform to continue the exchange on decentralisation and, in future, to invite partner country representatives to take part in trainings.