Commissioned by the European Union, CLGF Zimbabwe - in partnership with key implementing partners, is delighted to announce the official launch of a 40-month initiative: Stronger Local Authorities for Inclusive and Sustainable Economies (SLAISE). With a total estimated budget of EUR 2.5 million, this project targets 25 urban and rural local authorities across Zimbabwe, aiming to strengthen transparent, accountable and sustainable local governance that actively drives inclusive local economic development and long-term community resilience.

Enhancing the coordinating role of local government

As the tier of governance closest to communities, Zimbabwe’s local authorities are important actors in ensuring effective service delivery, democratic engagement and economic oversight. However, their ability to lead territorial development is often hindered by centralised control, overlapping mandates and tight fiscal constraints. In addition, whilst substantial external and private investments flow into agricultural value chains, these initiatives frequently operate independently of municipal planning and infrastructure frameworks.

SLAISE aims to address these structural challenges by strengthening the policy, fiscal, digital and participatory systems through which local authorities’ function. This will position and equip local authorities to act as the territorial coordinators of inclusive, climate-resilient economies. By doing so, the project also ensures that major investments in agricultural value chains and green growth are sustainably anchored within local municipal systems.

Key approaches and expected results

The project employs a politically informed, systems-strengthening and implementation-oriented approach. It does not assume full local autonomy in the context of partial devolution. Instead, it strengthens the functions that local authorities can realistically exercise, while building evidence, legitimacy and coordination mechanisms that improve their role within the wider intergovernmental system.

Moving beyond governance compliance towards economic empowerment, it links service delivery, digitalisation, ward participation, fiscal capacity and local economic development in its strategic approaches to achieve tangible results:

• Policy, institutional and fiscal capacity: Expanding fiscal space, improving programme-based budgeting and reducing audit backlogs to achieve up to a 30 percent improvement in revenue performance. Equipping at least 100 senior officials with essential skills in leadership, public financial management and value-chain facilitation.
• Digital transformation and operational systems: Fully deploying and utilising the Local Authorities Digital System (LADS) across all 25 target councils.
• Ward-based participation and traditional leadership: Conducting and digitising 250 comprehensive ward profiles to inform participatory planning, budgeting, service delivery and local economic development, while stronger integrating traditional leadership into formal local governance.
• Local economic development (LED) and value-chain coordination: Supporting at least 10 local authorities to develop integrated LED strategies, and facilitating concrete market linkages, financing arrangements or agricultural productive facilities.
• Knowledge, learning and sustainability: Establishing a functional Local Government Research and Development Centre (LOGRDC) to support policy dialogue and learning across all 92 local authorities.

Project sustainability

SLAISE’s sustainability strategy is anchored in institutional embedding. LADS will support ward profiling, revenue systems, value-chain data, budgeting, monitoring and harmonised reporting, while LOGRDC will curate local authority profiles, spatial data, service indicators, value-chain information, research outputs and public learning products. By working through MLGPW, UCAZ, ARDCZ, ZILGA, councils and technical partners, the project will strengthen existing systems rather than create parallel structures. Local authority co-financing, in-kind contributions, digital capacity building, peer learning and integration of outputs into statutory plans and budgets will help sustain results after EU funding ends.

For more information, view the project’s factsheet here.