CLGF is celebrating an award of nearly £4m from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to support local economic development (LED) projects for local government throughout the Commonwealth.

The money will be used to implement a new programme of work to expand and build on CLGF’s earlier LED projects, which ran from 2012 to 2016 and also received partial support from DFID. This new tranche of funding will support a national roll out of LED activities across existing and new countries. CLGF’s aim is to turn LED from capacity to action, to achieve tangible and measurable results.

The programme will continue to focus on three regions: Southern Africa, West Africa and South Asia.

CLGF’s Project Manager Claire Frost explained: "The work is very much about action at the local level and developing a sustainable approach to local economic development while strengthening the support and guidance of national policy frameworks. The programme will also help CLGF to continue its important advocacy work on localising the SDGs and supporting local democracy throughout the commonwealth."

CLGF has developed good practice at the local level which, if applied and tested in new partner local authorities, can be easily modified and adopted. This work will enable CLGF to consolidate the LED approach as a framework to implement SDGs within the targeted regions and across the Commonwealth.

CLGF’s Secretary General Dr Greg Munro said: "CLGF’s project work aligns very closely with DFID’s strategic objective to tackle extreme poverty and help the world’s most vulnerable. The projects will also contribute to strengthening global peace, security and governance, and promote global prosperity and achieving the SDGs: all key objectives for both DFID and CLGF. "