Need for civic education to raise the awareness of what local government among the electorate and what to look for when electing their councillors

Knowledge of what the responsibilities of councillor are can assist voters to make informed choices in selecting leaders with the requisite skills

Continuous capacity building efforts for councillors and local government staff is needed to ensure effective service delivery

Expertise in specialised fields like financial management and integrated planning is needed especially in rural and remote parts of our countries

Need for political will by all stakeholders to ensure effective partnering for development

Local governments should be regarded as partner in development and not agents of development

Need for the strengthening of partnership between central and local government players

Capacity building initiatives to educate both local and central government players to deepen their understanding on effective partnering.

There is need for the existence of strong legal framework but without political will there maybe implementation problems

Regional partnerships, exchange of information and good practise ,joint advocacy, collaborative service delivery are important.

Experiences in East Africa where there is regional cooperation at the local government level demonstrate they importance of such an initiative

There is need to demonstrate the link between policy at the regional level and the local level