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