Full list of Events

Background

Districts are currently delegated to plan and implement development plans or projects at the grass-roots level in the Oromia Regional Government of Ethiopia. Currently, about 301 districts (aanaas) and more than 6,250 villages (gandas) are delegated to plan and implement development plans/projects at the grass-roots level, with all the responsibilities of project planning and management. However, almost all of the districts have limited capacity and lack planners with requisite skills in project planning and management and data collection and analysis. This suggests a focus on district-focused capacity-building to enable the district planners to design and implement effective development projects and programmes for effective poverty alleviation and sustainable development at the district and village levels.

Although UNCRD has trained a number of planners (about 287) to date through its in-country training courses, as the skills and knowledge of the planners improve, some of them have left the public sector and joined the ever-growing NGOs and the private sector where the numeration rates are relatively higher. The high turnover rate has especially created problems at the district level. To strengthen and build capacity at the lower levels, the current technical assistance by the UNCRD Africa Office will focus on district development planning to provide district planners with requisite knowledge and technical know-how to design, implement, and manage effective district plans, projects, and programmes at the lower levels.

Objectives

More specifically, the training course aims to:

Strengthen the institutional capacity of OBFED for effective project planning and management, and data collection and analysis at the district and lower levels;

Upgrade the capacity of the planning staff at the district level for giving technical advice and guidance in project planning and management, and data collection and analysis at the district and lower levels;

Build capacity at the district levels for development planning and implementation of projects by providing planners with requisite skills and knowledge in project planning and management;

Provide practical skills to enable the participants to gather necessary data and prepare proposals applicable to the grass-roots level; and

Introduce the participants to methods and techniques of data collection and information management, as well as PRA methods.