Anderlecht (Belgium)-Marsassoum (Senegal) | Federal Programme for Municipal International Cooperation

For the third time, the PLATFORMAwards will put under the spotlights the best practices in city-to-city and region-to-region development cooperation. 8 projects have been shortlisted out of 18 applications. Everyday, we are presenting you two of them (sorted by alphabetical order). The 3 finalists will receive their trophies at the ceremony in Grenoble (France) on 6 December.

Discover how Anderlecht in Belgium is presenting its partnership with Marsassoum in Senegal:

In Senegal, the Belgian Municipal International Cooperation (CIC) programme aims at the local economic development of municipalities in partner countries. This multi-annual programme (2022-2026) follows on from the previous programme (2017-2021), which built a solid partnership relationship.

Within the framework of this project, the decentralised cooperation between the municipalities of Marsassoum and Anderlecht aims to significantly improve, in a participatory and inclusive manner, the service offer for Sustainable Local Economic Development in the partner municipality.

To this end, the activities implemented in Marsassoum focus on these three themes:

1. setting up a local development fund (FCDL) to finance innovative micro-projects;
2. to analyse and structure the local economic fabric by supporting local economic actors through the Local Development Office, and by proposing a place for processing and selling local products, under shared management;
3. and to support the municipality, its agents and elected representatives through training and IT tools in order to improve the collection of local taxes.

In particular, the decentralised cooperation programme has achieved the following:

• The FCDL has made it possible to finance individuals and G.I.E. for an amount of 39 M FCFA (13 M in the first year in 2022).
• Updating the cadastral survey to improve tax collection (on commercial activities, movable property and individuals). The population is made aware of the tax system and the tax duties of Senegalese citizens.
• Elected officials and agents of the Commune are trained on the issue of tax collection and trained in the newly introduced tools.
• The 8 neighbourhood delegates (from the tax commission) are equipped and trained, and are the key players in the Commune’s participatory budget.
• “Le Marsa” (a shared space for the processing and sale of local products) is functional and self-managed by the economic actors.