RTI Aids Morocco With $15 Million Award

The new five-year, $15 million award will strengthen the capacity of Moroccan governments to mobilize revenue and develop innovative partnerships to deliver local services. RTI's experts will help local governments strengthen their procurement procedures and develop internal financial controls.

"At the national level, the project will support the increased devolution and deconcentration of authority to the regional and provincial levels," said Christian Arandel, RTI's technical manager for the project. "This will ensure that decision-making is brought closer to the citizens who are directly impacted by these decisions."

The Local Governance Program will emphasize providing youth and women with opportunities to participate in local affairs, building on achievements from a project RTI implemented from 2005 to 2009.

Poor rural women are involved in developing poverty reduction plans as part of the Local Governance Program. [Photo: Project staff]

The project will focus on increasing citizen participation in local governance, enhancing local governments' ability to provide better services to citizens, and encouraging increased accountability and transparency in local governance in the regions of Rabat-Salé, Fez Boulemane, and Doukkala-Abda (El Jadida).

Recognizing the need to create a climate that promotes change and fosters innovation, the project will apply RTI's "Making Noise" approach. This innovative communications plan incorporates a variety of methods—including peer-to-peer workshops, dissemination of governance messages, and posting project results on Web sites—to reach the media, other communes, and citizens.

RTI will also help local governments improve their performance by developing ways to better mobilize local revenues, establishing standard procedures and internal control mechanisms for more transparent management, and promoting public-private partnerships and intermunicipal collaboration for the effective provision of local services.

"This recent award will perpetuate RTI's more than 30 years of contribution to social and economic development in Morocco," Arandel said.