Moving Towards Local Agenda 21 in Rufisque, Senegal

This paper describes the consultation processes in Rufisque that have laid the foundations for a local agenda 21. These consultations have helped to establish new relationships between municipal government, community organisations and the private sector and have encouraged a range of initiatives to address local economic and environmental problems. New community-level and district committees have developed to bring different stakeholders together to identify problems and develop responses. The paper also describes how decentralization in Senegal has encouraged this, although local authorities remain weak because the decentralization of responsibilities has not been accompanied by measures to ensure local financial capacity to meet them.