Local Government Development Project

closed

The development objective of the Local Government Development Program Project for Mauritania is to strengthen the institutional performance of Mauritania’s targeted local governments in order to improve their capacity to deliver services. The project has three components. The first component is Conditional Performance Grants (CPG) for Local Governments (LG). The component supports the CPG providing funding for LG infrastructure investment and management conditional on LG performance and basic functional capacity. The allocation for each LG is divided into two portions: (i) basic grant; and (ii) performance grant. The second component is targeted capacity support to targeted local governments, de-concentrated and central institutions and agencies. This component provides an integrated customized package of support to systematically address the gaps in the local government system. This component includes two sub-components: (i) targeted capacity support to local governments; and (ii) institutional support to national, regional and de-concentrated agencies. The third component is project management support and monitoring and evaluation. This component will provide support to project management of the program. Support will be given to the project coordination unit to deliver the following tasks: (i) provide overall project management and stakeholder coordination; (ii) overall responsibility for monitoring and evaluation of all project activities and components, including oversight of LG compliance with fiduciary and safeguards requirements; (iii) contract and oversee independent consultant teams to undertake the annual independent Performance Assessment (PA) of all the participating LGs; (iv) a bi-annual audit of the quality and independence of the PA process; (v) a baseline, mid-term and end-of-project (EOP) satisfaction survey of residents in the participating LGs; (vi) an independent assessment of the effectiveness of the mobile teams (at mid-term); (vii) an assessment of the effective use of investment resources by participating LGs (at mid-term and EOP); (viii) external financial audits of the participating LGs and the designated account(s); and (ix) specialized studies to enhance overall operation of the LG system.