Located about 220 kms north East of Addis Ababa, Shewa Robit is found in North Shoa Zone Administration of Amhara State. Home to 56, 000 people, the town is striving to grow rapidly utilizing its various developmental opportunities.
Recently it has been chosen as one of the towns to benefit from a World Bank financed Institutional Development program.
“Reducing the problems of good governance, towns’ development, and democracy are the priority areas of World Bank to support Ethiopian towns and cities” says Amlaku Adamu, Head of Urban Income Improvement Fund Mobilization and Finance Bureau at MUDC.
According to Amelaku, Ethiopia has more than 2,056 towns and two cities administrations with minimum standard requirements of over 20,000 populations.
Limitation of government financial capacity compared to the total number of towns and cities impedes efforts to reduce the various problems of Ethiopian towns and cities. Hence, WB started to support the government ten years ago with selected 19 towns including Addis Ababa with Urban Local Development plan Phase one plan from 2001 up to 2006. However, the number of towns has increased to 44 with stage two from 2007 up to the 2019 fiscal year. But Addis Ababa has withdrawn from the program on its interest.
Towns are selected through some major criteria like self-administration and leadership of a mayor, providing service municipality and state council, leads by mayor committee, and should have more than 20,000 populations.
As to him, the main aim of the program is extending a system which helps to realize the town’s institutional capacity building, infrastructures development, and job creation among towns and cities.
Currently, 117 towns including the 44 towns have embraced stage III of the new Institutional Development program. French government has supported 11 million dollars in this stage. However, it does not mean that towns are not contributing money to facilitate the expected result. For instance, 44 towns were embraced under stage II of the program for which 556 million USD was allocated. Out of the total amount of money, 380 million USD was funding from WB while the balance was allocated by the government.
Close to 859 million USD has been earmarked for the new stage by WB, French government and Federal government. From the total amount of money, 273million USD is grant agreement and 327 million USD loan while the remaining is allocated by the government.
‘’The government and WB have signed a legal Financial Agreement Document implementing by Program Appraisal Document. While it has two fundamental Operational Manuals which control the day to day activities that help to the funding and credit money spending on the expected purpose.’’
In this regard, evaluating value for money and assessment carrying out by independent organs are the serious tasks which taking place each year to know the money is spending on its purpose, Amlaku added.
He stressed that the new stage focuses on local economic development, urban resilience, gender equity, job creation, expanding infrastructures, and institutional capacity building. This shows that the evaluation is looking in depth while towns performance plays an indispensable role to actualize the intended goal throughout the nation, Amlaku explained.
Akalu Wondemu, Mayor of Shewarobit town Administration, on his part said that his town is selected by WB in this fiscal year from towns located in north Shewa of Amhara state through a criteria of people advocacy, job creation, women participation, and income collecting among others succeeding over 50 per cent.
Since the town is selected for the first time, WB funds four million Birr which is expected to reach more than 78 million Birr within the coming four years depending on the performance of the town.
According to him, WB concerned quality, participation, and fairness. In this regard, the town enables to succeed 70 percent of quality infrastructure building in the past fiscal year by its town budget, but it has some limitation on terrace arena.
Particularly, the limitation of skill capacity on officers and leaders are challenges which hinder the performance. However, after communicating with WB, additional money spending to experts and those they supervise and advise service to build quality infrastructure in the town.
He added that the town has more than 56,000 populations. Among the total amount of population, over 4,000 of them are unemployed. This shows that the town is one of the places which have a severe rate of unemployment. While the WB plan will address to 40,000 peoples benefit.
On the other hand, the WB funds will spend on infrastructure building and job creation in the town. In this regard, the town has given 80 percent of job creation to graduated youth especially in the construction arena.
On the other hand, create a discussion forum with private investors within the town, communicating and create ties with different banks and the like is the plan of the town next to joint with WB to create a preferable town for investors and residents, he added.
The Ethiopian Herald August 10, 2019
BY MESERET BEHAILU
