A meeting jointly convened by the Urban Governance Section and the Training and Capacity Building Branch of UN-HABITAT, in collaboration with MDP-ESA, CIGU and ENDA Tiers-Monde 22-25 November, 2005, United Nations Complex, Gigiri, Nairobi, Kenya

The Expert Group Meeting brought together twenty one country participants from Sub-Saharan Africa in an effort to discuss the development of a training companion for participatory Budgeting. Participants included representatives of local government, local government associations, municipal reform programmes, civil society as well as academic and training institutions with relevant experience in the field. The meeting sought to build on lessons learned from initiatives of participatory budgeting already existent in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa in order to facilitate the design of a training companion that will aid in transferring this practice to additional countries in the Sub-Saharan region. The main objectives of the workshop were to review capacity building needs for initiating processes of participatory budgeting in the region; to reach an agreement on the content and format of the training companion; and elaborate a roadmap for the development and dissemination of the training companion. This meeting marked an essential first step in the collaboration between UN-HABITAT, CIGU, ENDA Tiers-Monde and MDP-ESA for the future design of the training companion. At the close of the meeting, participants agreed that an African generic training companion for participatory budgeting should be devised, that little adaptation of the tools already existent in the field will be required for the introduction of the practice in the Sub-Saharan region and that networking facilities on the topic should be established and sustained.