‘We’ll implement pro-poor pilot project in CMR’

The West African Regional Programme Officer of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, CLGF, Juliet Mekone Tataw, has revealed that her organisation will implement one pilot project for Local Economic Development, LED, in Cameroon.

“This pilot project will be pro-poor and will be supporting the marginalised in the society,” the Commonwealth official stated in an exclusive interview with The Post in Yaounde recently.

Juliet Sale Mekone Tataw, whose office is in Accra, Ghana, is holding talks with the Minister Delegate in the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, MINATD, in charge of Decentralisation, Jules Doret Ndongo, and the Minister Delegate at the Ministry of External Relations in charge of the Commonwealth, Chief Dr. Dion Ngute.

The CLGF is implementing the pilot project after receiving grants from the Department for Internal Development, DFID (British aid).

The funding is intended to implement Local Economic Development, LED, in Commonwealth countries of South Asia, Southern Africa and West Africa. Going by the official, West Africa includes Cameroon, Serra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria.

CLGF whose West African Regional Programme Office was opened in Accra in June 2014, is unique in that it supports local Governments, associations and ministries of local Government.

The forum, she went on will carry out LED at the local Council level to support institutional development of the local Government’s associations. It will support policy improvement and legislative framework at the national level.

To Tataw, the funding will equally support regional integration in West Africa as well as improve CLGF in its advocacy work. The pilot project for Local Economic Development that the CLGF will implement in Cameroon will end in 2016.

“We will start implementing the project as soon as the pilot site is selected,” she stated.