As a follow-up to the local development programme in Guinea (PDLG-1) implemented between 2001 and 2006, the local development programme in Guinea (PDLG-2) is aimed at supporting decentralization and citizen participation in local management in order to achieve accelerated poverty reduction. In terms of the immediate objective, PDLG-2 will contribute to the institution of sound and sustainable local governance and the intensification of decentralization at the local and regional levels.

The project has four outcomes, each of them involving a number of activities:

1. Demonstrated effectiveness of the local communities in project management thanks to the strengthening of their capacity for ownership of the tools of planning, financing and municipal management.
2. The economies of the local communities which are the project’s partners and those of the region in which they are located will initiate a process of sustained and integrated development.
3. A harmonized approach to participatory planning and follow-up of local development activities will be adopted and implemented in the local communities and at the prefectural and regional levels.
4. The process of decentralization and local development will be able to draw on a strategic framework and a technical and financial implementation mechanism backed by a monitoring-evaluation system and periodic consultation frameworks.

• UNCDF support for decentralization and local development started in 1999 through the local development project in Upper and Middle Guinea (PDLG). This activity covered 23 CRDs in Siguiri and Kouroussa prefectures in Upper Guinea: (i) participatory local planning; (ii) financing of the public investments that emerged from the local consultation process; (iii) strengthening of the capacity of local players; (iv) strengthening of local economic development, with the emphasis on economic poles; (v) mobilization of the local communities' internal resources, with a view to sustainability of the activities initiated. This intervention was positively evaluated in June 2007. The present project is a continuation of the PDLG.
• The lessons learned from the implementation of the PDLG-1 provide clarifications regarding the approaches taken to supporting and intensifying the process of decentralization and local development in Guinea, with particular respect to: (i) resource mobilization and allocation; (ii) financing mechanism for the local development fund; (iii) local governance.
• In the area of resource mobilization and management, the PDLG showed that citizens' readiness to contribute to building up local resources, both fiscal and non-fiscal, entails establishing a clear link between their contribution and the generation of infrastructures designed and planned in a participatory manner in the service of the community. In this connection, the system of financial and institutional analysis of the local communities (SAFIC) appears as a tool not only for inventorying latent potential but also for citizen participation and strengthening of the capacities of elected officials.
• The local development fund (LDF) mechanism has proved effective in stimulating capacity for local investment managed in a participatory and democratic manner by the local players. Nevertheless, the linkage between the components for public financing of local infrastructures on the one hand and of economic activities, particularly in the form of grants, on the other has demonstrated its limitations.
• The other lessons relate to: (i) the importance of the expression of local production capacity in order to make the mechanisms for financing the investments sustainable; (ii) the importance of establishing and activating participatory consultation bodies or frameworks capable of playing a genuine counterbalancing role and thus becoming the main catalyst of sound and sustainable local governance; (iii) the need to develop local economic leadership capacity by identifying and promoting promising sectors and niche markets and supporting the establishment of value chains, especially on the basis of existing potential and possibilities.
• PDLG-2 aims at serving as a lever to involve local communities, structures at the regional level, the institutions at the central level and Guinea 's development partners in intensifying decentralization and local development so as to make them a genuine strategy for combating poverty. To this end, three strategic approaches are followed. They focus on the three levels of management of the decentralization process, namely the national level, the intermediate level (regional and prefectural) and the local level, and are presented as follows:
  1. Strategic approach No. 1: Progressive and continued increase in local responsibility and capacity for managing development at the local level in general and promotion of economic development initiatives in particular.
  2. Strategic approach No. 2: Strengthening capacity at the intermediate level (region and prefecture) so as to (i) ensure coherence and linkage between the national and local levels and (ii) provide local communities with on-the-spot technical, organizational and institutional support in order to accompany and coordinate local development.
  3. Strategic approach No. 3: Contribution to the improvement of the guidance and support of decentralization at the central level, by aiming specifically at defining a strategic framework for concerted guidance and implementation of this process in Guinea.

Operational supervision of the project will be conducted by the Ministry of the Interior and Security. The Government (Ministry of the Interior and Security) will chair the CCP.

• The programme will intervene on the one hand in Upper Guinea, one of the poorest regions, with a local development fund as well an economic development fund, and on the other hand, in a phased approach (Phase 1: capacity-building; Phase 2, conditional upon resource mobilization: local development fund), in the forested part of Guinea.
• Thus it will benefit a population estimated at more than 880,000 inhabitants.
• It will have an impact at the regional level thanks to the testing of a regional development agency and an impact at the national level through the Government's support for the establishment of a sustainable technical and financial mechanism to guide decentralization and public investment in the local communities.

• In the context of building national, regional and local institutional capacity, the project will contribute to the development and expansion of the system for review and evaluation of decentralization and local development, as well as building on the achievements, based on the results-oriented management method. The aim is the eventual establishment of a management information system as a tool for follow-up of local communities, enabling the officials and agents of the territorial communities to conduct regular evaluations of the results achieved by local communities on the one hand and to review the project indicators on the other hand. A reference study will be conducted at the start of the project in order to facilitate measurement of the progress achieved.
• UNDP and UNCDF are required to conduct a final evaluation of the programme by a team of independent evaluators. Because of the programme's design in phases and the total amount of UNDP and UNCDF contributions, an independent midterm and final evaluation incorporating evaluation of the impacts in accordance with the UNDAF objectives and indicators is called for.

• Resource mobilization