Activity no. 5: Improve Parliamentary Development Assistance co-ordination and integration in Africa

The nature and scale of the many objectives of the Project is such that they can be best achieved through a collaborative effort involving different organizations and their expertise. The Project acknowledges the strategic importance of a participatory approach, and will establish partnerships with other initiatives and interested stakeholders. Building synergies is in fact at the very core of the strategic approach for the Project.

Parliaments have to coordinate with a variety of UN agencies, associations, research institutes and universities as well as with other parliaments and parliamentary associations  (e.g. IPU, ECPRD, NCSL, etc.), providing technical assistance, and pre-packaged development solutions.

On the other hand, development partners have to deal with a demand that is huge as Africa counts 53 countries, many languages and a considerable gap in resources and skills.

This scenario urges for the establishment of a Parliamentary Assistance Framework for Africa to foster collaboration and synergies among existing initiatives aiming at strengthening the capacity of African Parliaments. Within this framework, donor and development partners will be able to pool human and financial resources and base their intervention on a common plan of action for:

• Better prioritization of Parliaments’ needs
• Improved coordination and synergy of efforts
• Rationalization of investments
• Cost-effective and streamlined attainment of results
• Sustainability and high impact of achievements 

In order to promote the coordination among Development Partners and African institutions the project will promote, in collaboration with PAP, regular stakeholders meetings on Parliamentary Assistance Framework for Africa with the aim to improve programming, coordination, monitoring, evaluation and mobilization of resources in the parliamentary assistance domain.

The possibility to establish parliamentary assistance features in the African Governance Inventory (AGI) Portal, developed by the Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (UN/DESA), will also be explored.

The close cooperation that already exist between the Global Centre for ICT in Parliaments, the partnership initiative led by UN/DESA and the IPU, will be further strengthened so that the Project can benefit from the experiences and activities that the Global Centre carries out. At the same time, the Project will act as the regional node for the initiatives of the Global Centre in Africa.

The Project will coordinate its activities with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), with which it will establish collaborative partnerships with a view to create synergies and draw on their analytical and implementation capacities and skills. It will also closely coordinate the implementation of activities with those of the Africa Union (AU), the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UNDP Country Offices, and UN Resident Coordinators in the Africa region.

UN/DESA will seek to associate with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the African Parliamentary Union (APU), the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), and the Assemblée Parlementaire de la Francophonie (APF) in their Programme’s activities. The degree of collaboration will vary in accordance to the activities carried out, and the skills and expertise of each organisation.

The Project will make it a priority to build sound and sustainable partnerships that can add value and sustainability to the implementation process. The multi-faceted dimension of the Project’s activities will offer a broad range of prospects for cultivating collaborations with different partners to strengthen parliamentary institutional and their organizational capabilities.