The project aims to strengthen the capacities of city governments in Africa to develop and implement policy reforms and strategies to expand and build resilient fiscal space as part of national building forward priorities. The fiscal space of a local government refers to its capacity to spend without compromising its overall budget sustainability. Fiscal space is determined by economic, financial, and legislative pillars. The project specifically focuses on the financial pillar across 5 indicators namely liquidity, autonomy, operating surplus, collective efficiency, and solvency. It, therefore, aims to strengthen the capacities of selected African cities across these dimensions which define financial performance and in turn fiscal space to fulfill city government mandates while responding to external shocks such as COVID-19.

The project will support the selected cities through a chain of interventions ranging from generating evidence to the design of actual interventions for improved fiscal space. As a foundation, the project will assess the financial performance of the target cities to determine the current status and priority areas of potential intervention to broaden and strengthen the fiscal space through both city and national level interventions. Such evidence will be used to design new and innovative solutions for expanding fiscal space in each city tailored to the local and national contexts. Emphasis will be placed on the capacity of city authorities to carry out these functions whilst ensuring transparency and accountability.