Constituency coordination: lessons and good practices

1
Constituency coordination lessons and good
practices

• By
• Alfred A. Oteng-Yeboah
• GEF Council Member, Ghana Constituency of Coastal
  West Africa

2
Issues with Implementing and Executing Agencies

• The constituents wondered why some IAs and EAs
  seemed to be much slower in their dealings with
  countries and why they introduce very cumbersome
  administrative procedures in their operations.

3
Country Ownership of projects

• Focal Points were advised to ensure country
  ownership of GEF projects and Programmes
• Agencies to be reminded to reinforce country
  leadership

4
Intra-constituency communication

• This refers to communication problems between
  Francophone and Anglophone members of the
  constituency.
• It was suggested that countries should enhance
  language capacities in the offices of the Focal
  Point, for example by having the Government
  recruit a staff to assist in French or English as
  appropriate.
• Other suggestions to improve intra-constituency
  communication included
• Regular sharing of information
• Experience sharing
• Development of an intra-constituency training and
  exchange programme, particularly between
  Anglophone and Francophone countries, with the
  view of helping member states to improve the
  language skills of its citizens.
• Ghana was invited to take advantage of their term
  as constituency chair to enhance communication
  within the constituency

5
In-country coordination of GEF projects

• The type of in-country experiences and
  mechanisms for GEF coordination in the
  constituency were found to be different. It was
  suggested to share the type of framework other
  members had used for their GEF coordination to
  assist all countries in the constituency to learn
  from each other