The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on jobs and employment in cities globally, has diminished local government revenue, and has caused a sharp decline in productivity due to lockdowns, restrictions, and the closure and bankruptcy of firms and businesses. This project aims to strengthen the capacities of local governments in 16 cities, empower local governments and scale community and city level resilience.

The project has worked to strengthen the capacities of policy makers for economic recovery and resilience planning through training and technical workshops, and through capacity building workshops to facilitate liaison between authorities in different cities on good practices. The project has also been instrumental in the application of a detailed diagnostics tool covering the areas of business, environment, labour, markets, financial arrangements, economic governance, and infrastructure, resulting in a city economic performance profile. The preparation of an Economic Resilience and Recovery Plans are underway, that will feed into COVID-19 recovery policy interventions and monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

The project is also linking the recovery from COVID-19 with Voluntary Local Review processes. A diagnostic tool, combined with stakeholder engagement and mobilization of local expertise, has been utilized to establish multi-stakeholder coalitions that will assist cities to develop inclusive resilience recovery plans. Stakeholder visioning workshops have been held with participants from business sectors, representatives of marginalized groups, and city officials to galvanize commitments for the implementation of the recovery plan. Priority lines of action and key challenges have been outlined which will led to the development of strategies that will serve as a roadmap for the next stage of the project.

Planned project activities for the next phase of the project further include: the delivery of local economic recovery and resilience implementation workshops, design of economic and financial recovery and rebuilding plans, delivery of an e-learning course on urban economic and financial recovery and rebuilding, and development and dissemination of information packages of sources for financial support to cities.

Read more about the Development Account’s COVID-19 response.