About the policy dialogue
This APD is hosted by the Institute of Local Government Studies and will run for 33 months. The aim of this APD is to promote youth economic inclusion through a new approach, the Next Generation Local Economic Development (NGLED). NGLED is expected to shift the focus of Local Governments (LGs) focus from simply creating an enabling environment to deliberate pursuit of productive economic activities. In Ghana, local government legislation and policies that outline the mandate of LGs are in place. The Local Governance Act of 2016 mandates LGs to create jobs and reduce poverty through the promotion of local economic development (LED). Further, within the National Decentralisation Policy and Strategy (2020-2024), LED is one of the six areas for creating an enabling environment for income growth, sustained
business development and decent job creation. Despite the legislation and policy, decentralisation and LGs have largely focused on service provision. Moreover, the enabling environment practices by LGs have not effectively promoted tangible local economic products, jobs and income growth. This APD will develop a NGLED and encourage its adoption. The objective is to enable LGs to directly support productive economic activities, encourage partnerships, improve governance and to support entrepreneurship and businesses. The outputs of this APD are as follows.
- Avail new knowledge on NGLED for youth economic inclusion for policy and programme engagement and uptake;
- Develop 5 youth business groups with a revolving working capital that would create about 160 new jobs in three years;
- Develop an entrepreneurial LG model for NGLED that can be replicated in other LGs; and
- Provide evidence for the review of the National Decentralisation Policy and Strategy (2020- 2024) and the Local Economic Development Policy (2020-2024), which will expire this year.