MUDAR – Mozambique Integrated Urban Development by Actions and Relationships – is a project co-funded by the European Union that aims at strengthening the capacity of the Conselho Municipal da Beira (CMB – Beira City Council) to promote integrated urban development and empowerment of local governance. It also aims at building up a strong sense of inclusive citizenship, by involving the population and civil society in the implementation of specific project activities.
The lead applicant is Provincia Autonoma di Trento (PAT), a local authority from northern Italy, which carries out the activities in partnership with CMB, the Centro per la Cooperazione Internazionale from Italy, the Instituto de Formação em Administração Pública e Autárquica da Beira (IFAPA Beira), the University of Trento in Italy and Universidade Zambeze in Beira.
The Consorzio Associazioni con il Mozambico (CAM) is an Italian NGO selected by PAT as implementing partner of this project in Beira, due to its 20 year-long experience in development assistance in Mozambique in different fields, including waste management system and social inclusion.
As explained in another article of this newsletter, MUDAR will provide technical training on urban development to CMB. The tools and methods of this training will be then used in the implementation of a pilot project in Macuti, a coastal neighbourhood of Beira. Macuti is very representative of the urban development challenges that Beira, as well as other cities in Mozambique, has been facing: it is divided into an unplanned informal area that is poorly endowed with basic infrastructures and services like roads, sewage, drainage and waste management,and a planned formal area that makes up the richest part of the area. Furthermore, the unplanned area is experiencing a steep increase in its population, hence aggravating the socio-economic challenges of Macuti.
The project embeds in its structure the idea of sustainable urban development and makes the participatory process an important methodological pillar. The “fil rouge” that links all the activities in Macuti is the constant dialogue between the local community and CMB to improve the quality of the services provided by the municipality in the target area and to develop a sense of inclusive citizenship and ownership of the the results that have been achieved.
In this framework, CAM will act as an operational arm of MUDAR and will guarantee the participation of all stakeholders in the decision- making process. To do so, in the last weeks CAM supported CMB in the organisation of an event for the launch of the activities, as well as it helped establish six different working groups which will periodically meet to coordinate actions, exchange opinions and take decisions regarding specific issues of the project. Each group has a specific focus and acts at a specific level. The coordination team will manage the activities of the project and the communication between partners. The technical team will take care of the development and execution of the pilot project. The Municipal and Local Committees will support the decision-making process within the project and will act as supervisor of the different activities. The Youth and Associations Committee will plan and develop several activities to involve the local community in the objectives of the project and finally the Administration team will control the implementation of the activities.
The establishment of working groups between partners and the local community helps to better understand what kind of interventions MUDAR team can consider to deliver within the regeneration pilot project in Macuti.
For instance, on occasion of an assessment conducted in Macuti, local authorities and the community were involved to measure the accessibility of roads, access to water and drainage infrastructure, describe the situation of open spaces and assess how to develop a joint programme of solid waste collection and management system. Some of the findings of this assessment are reported further in another article.
In the coming months, CMB will organise a series of events in Macuti that will be open to citizens to give back the results of the assessment and create working groups with the local community, in line with the participative approach of MUDAR. Indeed, the population, local associations and other relevant actors will be involved in thinking and designing the future of their neighborhood, with the goal to maximize the social impact on the project.
