Local Economic Development

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• Local Economic Development
• Global Perspectives
• Gwen Swinburn
• Local and Regional Economic Development
  Specialist

Gwen.swinburn_at_gmail.com
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International Context Traditional Development
Approaches

• Traditional development approaches have tended to
  be
• either
• Macro-economic, sectoral, top down, supply side,
  generally spatially indifferent
• or
• Micro level CDD interventions, but still top
  down, supply side, sectoral, spatially targeted
  but delivered at neighbourhood level, often
  unsustainable (below local government level)

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International Context Newer (non-established)
Approaches

• Newer approaches are looking at
• Meso-level territorial responses at sub-national
  levels, these proliferate in high income
  countries
• Stimulate systemic improvements in the local
  economy
• Strategic planning for a territory, not sectors
• Integrating multiple initiatives to meet local
  priorities
• Full engagement of public, private and community
  sectors
• Build confidence and work on strengths and
  opportunities not just problems and weaknesses

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Three Waves of LED Governance
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and in Africa

• Practice in LED strategies very thin in Africa
• - South Africa the exception (we will hear
  later)
• However many individual LED type projects
• - Often projects not connected to exploit
  synergies
• - National programs therefore may not be locally
  owned or even locally relevant
• - Not based on local frame conditions, economic
  research or local priorities
• Many LED projects actively avoid local
  governments
• - Either through CDD or direct private sector
  actions
• Most practice rural and not urban
• - Not exploiting evidence that towns and cities
  drive economic growth in urban and rural areas
• There are many projects that meet a number of LED
  principles but are not territorially based, nor
  necessarily designed locally.
• - These still contribute to economic development
  and make an important development contribution

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Introducing LED - Definitions

• LED refers to those development strategies that
  are territorially based, locally owned and
  managed and aimed primarily at increasing
  employment and economic growth.
• LED is a strategically planned, locally driven,
  partnership approach to enabling employment
  growth, poverty reduction and quality of life
  gains through improved local economic governance

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LED Guiding Principles

• Strategies based on sound analysis, economic,
  social and institutional.
• Territorial integrating sectors, urban with
  rural, not supply but demand driven
• Partnerships driven by local and regional
  government with business community
• Locally decided balance between improved business
  enabling environment, economic, poverty social
  goals

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12 Emerging Trends in LED Policy and Practices

• Urban areas (large and small) drive economic
  growth with their rural hinterlands focus on
  functional economic space
• Territorial interventions not just sectoral
  interventions
• Common strategic framework enabling local
  priority setting (social and economic) top down
  framework enabling bottom up strategies
  (Alistair later)
• Focus first on improving the whole local business
  enabling environment, rather than subsidizing
  individual firms
• Grow your own jobs rather than import jobs
• Emphasis on building institutional mechanisms to
  enable formal and informal sector growth.

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12 Emerging Trends in LED Policy and Practices

• Where interventions are targeted focus on
  subjects with potential to grow people,
  businesses/clusters places
• Inclusion, informal economy and poverty reduction
  programs integrated are integrated into all
  program areas
• Quality of place increasingly matters, safety,
  environment and culture increasingly important
• For strategy design partnerships driven by local
  and/or regional government
• Projects are delivered by public, private and
  community actors
• Increasing focus on soft infrastructure
  especially human resource business networking/
  collaboration support

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Designing LED Interventions Some Issues to
Consider

• So briefly
• LED calibrating to resources methods to local
  realities
• LED as a Process
• LED Thematic Areas, Programme and Project options
• Donor and Client Perspectives

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LED Calibrating to Resources and Methods to Local
Realities

• Size and scale of target area
• Size of Budget
• Timescale of project
• Capacity of local actors and national consultants
• National and Local Enabling Environment
• Willingness of funders to try newer approaches

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LED as a Process Making it Work

• Economy Assessment getting the baseline
• Governance organising the effort
• Decision Making targeting and prioritising
• Implementation resourcing and project delivery
• Monitoring and upgrading learning and adapting

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LED Thematic Areas, Programmes and Project options

• Economic Governance
• Enterprise Development
• Livelihoods' Development
• Locality Development
• Workforce Development

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World Bank- LEDProgram and Project Options

• Improving the Local Business Investment Climate
• Investment in Hard Strategic Infrastructure
• Investment in Sites and Premises for Business
• Investment in Soft Infrastructure.
• Encouraging Local Business Growth
• Encouraging New Enterprise
• Promoting Inward Investment
• Sector (and business cluster) Development
• Area Targeting/Regeneration Strategies/urban/rural
  
• Integrating Low Income or Hard-to-Employ Workers

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Gwen Swinburn LED Credentials

• Economic geographer first degree, international
  policy and practice second
• 20 years as LED practitioner/policy maker in
  local government in English regions, urban and
  rural areas
• 10 years in international development, global
  remit
• Designed World Bank LED methodology practiced in
  50 towns and cities EE, Baltics, Balkans and
  Middle East, led the World Bank LED community of
  practice.
• Wrote manuals, training handbooks and trained on
  LED
• Adviser to bi-laterials, IFIs and NGOs on LED
  and RED policies and practices, global remit
  focus on knowledge sharing and capacity building.

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More Resources

• LEDNA Local Economic Development Network of
  Africa www.LEDNA.org
• for a
• A best in class online, one stop shop for free,
  unbiased, peer reviewed LED materials
• A virtual and subsequently physical social
  network of LED practitioners and policymakers
  across Africa (and beyond)
• Sign up www.ledna.org/register

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Donor Perspectives

• Even for those willing to try, working with
  this new paradigm is hard with resulting supply
  constraints
• Institutional constraints and stove pipes
• Risk averse and fear of innovation
• Spatial approach new and more complicated
• Responding to client demand new
• Many Local Governments make for many new clients,
  compared with national governments
• Getting lending out of the door
• Few experienced experts and practitioners in the
  field
• No systematic codification of LED knowledge,
  methods and examples for rapid learning and
  adaption

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Client Perspectives

• There is clear growing client demand at
  national local government levels to address the
  jobs agenda regional disparities.
• Enlightened national governments looking to
  empower local leaders
• Local leaders being pressured by electorate to
  address the economy
• Decentralisation, globalisation and increasing
  local awareness of HIC LED programs
• Donor fatigue and confidence to address own
  economic challenges and opportunities growing
• Dismay at traditional sectoral approaches and
  remedies not delivering hoped for impacts.

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Supplementary Slides
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Economic Governance Programme Areas

• Organising LED
• Municipal Improvement
• Inclusion
• Partnerships
• LED Planning
• LED Policy

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Enterprise Development Programme Areas

• Business Enabling Environment Improvements
• Business Attraction
• Business Retention
• Clusters
• Value Chains
• Micro businesses
• SME Facilitation
• Innovation

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Livelihoods Development Programme Areas

• Basic Services
• Community Development
• Minorities

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Locality Development Programme Areas

• Transport
• Telecommunications
• Energy
• Water and Sanitation
• Sites and Premises
• Natural Resource Management
• Regeneration

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Workforce Development Programme Areas

• Job Search
• Skills
• Youth
• Minorities

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Traditional LED Practices (1)

• Subsidise foreign direct investment attraction,
  ignoring local businesses
• No legal or administrative frameworks for LED
• Focus on manufacturing sector and sectoral
  interventions
• Hard infrastructure investments only
• Actions based on little understanding or research
  on the local economy

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Traditional LED Practices (2)

• Public sector only real player, no partnerships
• Supply driven
• No institutional mechanisms for LED
• Sectoral interventions
• LED undertaken within political boundaries

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Modern LED Practices (1)

• Invest in the whole local business environment,
  targeted business support on firms with growth
  potential
• Increasing legislative frameworks enabling
  sub-national economic development strategic
  planning and projects
• Focus on relevant agriculture, manufacturing
  service sectors enabling cluster development
• Increasing focus on soft infrastructure
  especially human resource business networking/
  collaboration support
• Evidenced based strategic planning

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Modern LED Practices (2)

• Public, private and community partnerships led by
  local governments
• Demand driven
• Emphasis on building institutional mechanisms to
  support businesses, formal and informal
• Territorial interventions
• LED undertaken within functional economic space
  with multiple jurisdictions

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Strategically planned LED Why Bother?

• To respond to community No 1 concern
  Unemployment
• To enable local partnerships to improve the
  local investment climate to encourage job growth,
  sustainable development and poverty reduction
• To enable cities to act as drivers of local and
  regional growth and hence contribute to national
  growth
• To encourage local governments to develop good
  governance through strategic planning,
  transparent financial management and stakeholder
  inclusion
• To enable Local Governments and stakeholders to
  identify and prioritize their own investment
  needs
• To give local partnerships tools and confidence
  to look forward to the future

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VISIONDurres will be Albanias principal hub for
the countrys maritime, road and rail
transportation the center for massive and elite
tourism, which offers unique history and
archeology. It will be a major center of the
trade with foreign countries city of banks and
insurance companies a modern city where the
community enjoys an advanced quality of life.
G.3. Support the existing businesses and
encourage new ones to develop more successfully.
G.2 Create a favorable climate for elite and
massive tourism.
G.1 Full integration in the regional and
international transport especially the seaport
gateway to Corridor 8.
G.5 Development of the cultural and
archeological heritage, so they can become part
of the cultural life of the city as well as of
the worlds heritage.
G.4 Create an environment that enables an
integral and sustainable development of the
municipality.
G.6 Provide for an advanced quality of life and
safety for all community members and visitors
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UCLGA LED Agenda and Africities Resolutions

• Undertake a stocktaking of existing African Local
  Economic Development methodologies and
  experiences
• Design an appropriate process to launch a
  Pan-African LED knowledge hub and network of
  competence centres.
• Local Governments are requested to
• Prioritize LED in Local Government policies and
  practices
• Contribute to the agreed stocktaking exercise
• Encourage creation of LED networks
• Donors are requested to
• Provide parallel small funding windows for
  quick-win LED projects and financial support to
  municipalities having produced strategic plans
• Provide financial support and technical
  assistance to the knowledge facility and
  institutional structures agreed, in particular
  methodologies to understand the local economy
• Push for nationwide programmes of LED
• National Governments
• Put in place a supportive framework so that Local
  Authorities can undertake LED and finance it
• Facilitate national LED exchange of experience
• Support capacity building for LED

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