2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The Republic of Chad is once again going through a turbulent period in its political history. After the death of the President of the Republic in April 2021, the country is going through a transition period that should lead to new presidential elections. To complete this process, in a consensual and inclusive manner, a national dialogue was organized at the end of which a government of national unity was put in place to lead the additional 24-month transition period.

During this period of transition, all the living forces of the nation are called upon to work, in different ways, to contribute to laying the foundations of a democratic and egalitarian republic.

To participate in this reconciliation process, the National Association of Municipalities of Chad (ANCT) and FERAM Chad jointly launched, on December 23, 2022, the National Support Program for Municipalities of Chad with the financial support of the OIF .

This launch is the culmination of a long process that started more than two years ago. It has received the approval of the President of the Republic, President of the Transitional Military Council (by correspondence referenced N° 1613/PR/SGP/CATD/21) but also of the ministerial departments in charge of decentralization and development planning. . Ultimately, the program will enable Chadian populations to participate in the design and evaluation of public policies at the local level through the operation of territorial observatories. The latter will be responsible for evaluating the functioning of the municipalities but also for making proposals for local public policies based on the real needs of the populations.

The willingness of FERAM Chad and the ANCT to design and implement this program results from the diagnoses established during the PND 2017/2021 and the sector analyzes established by the departments in charge of decentralization, health, education. and land use planning. Unanimously, these studies have highlighted the relative poverty of our cities, the lack of urban infrastructure, the poor supply of municipal services and the enormous need of the populations.

Overall, the objective of the program is to provide each municipality with a matrix of priority actions defined according to the needs of local populations. Specifically, it will be a question of developing for each municipality a list of priority actions that meet the basic needs of the populations.

In the current context, the program will thus contribute to permanently establishing the principles of participatory and deliberative democracy within Chadian politics.

For its implementation, the program will be carried out in three main phases: a phase (1) of sensitization and data collection; a phase (2) of processing and analysis of the data of the territorial diagnosis and formulation of the program in consultation, and a phase (3) of installation and follow-up of territorial observatories to ensure the participative and deliberative dynamics of the all local development stakeholders. 

• More information: https://www.facebook.com/Feramtchad2020 (External link)