Municipal Partners for Economic Development

MPED focuses support on sustainable, equitable economic development

Municipal Partners for Economic Development (MPED) is a five-year program (2010-15) to support sustainable and equitable economic development in seven developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas. It supports local governments and local government associations (LGAs) in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Nicaragua and Bolivia to enable them to provide more effective services that advance local economic development.

MPED also supports the engagement of program partners in regional knowledge sharing, global policy development, and program coordination, with an emphasis on environmental sustainability and gender equality.

By strategically concentrating resources on larger, more complex local-level "demonstration projects", MPED allows partners to develop new evidence-based models and best practices for effective municipal management and economic development. The resulting knowledge and data can help LGAs influence national policy development and replicate local successes throughout each country.

Under MPED, FCM's traditional one-on-one municipal partnership model is evolving to include individuals from several Canadian municipalities plus overseas experts working together as teams on a single project. Canadian municipal expertise remains at the core of the new program, but it is complemented with greater support from local resource providers. Local partners also receive small capital funding to purchase the equipment necessary to support this technical assistance.

The total MPED budget is $24.2 million, including a $18.4 million contribution from CIDA, and $5.8 million of in-kind contributions from FCM and its partners.