By Nangamso Mabindla
12 June 2007

THE success of its urban development programme is the focus of a conference hosted by Buffalo City and partnered by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) in East London on Thursday, 14 June.

Initiated in 2001, the Buffalo City – Sida urban development programme was set up by the Swedish government as a support to improve the lives of people in Buffalo City. Sida has had similar programmes with the Sol Paatjie and Nelson Mandela municipalities. The latter incorporates Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Despatch.

Buffalo City's communications manager, Darby Gounden, said that the conference would look at the partnership's successes and the lessons learned from the programme.

"Sida wanted to host such a conference so that we can measure our success and failures. We will then look at lessons learned and share them with other municipalities."

Guests invited to the conference include representatives from the Swedish embassy, business people, officials and councillors from the Amathole District Municipality, the City, neighbouring local municipalities, development agencies and people from the South African Local Government Association.

"We have had a number of projects that we have completed as a result of this partnership with Sida; at the conference we want to showcase those so that other municipalities can learn and take those ideas and implement them in their areas," Gounden said.

Some of the partnership projects included setting up Community Support Centres; introducing the geographic information system; environmental projects; sustainable human settlements; water management; roads; customer care; and good governance.

"We have also had some challenges, and in the seminar we [will] look at those failures. We should always remember that development programmes will always form part of a municipality; if we look at our failures, then we are able to avoid committing the same errors in the future," Gounden added.

The twinning agreement between Buffalo City and the Swedish city of Gävle was another product of the city's partnership with Sida.

"We believe that our partnership with Gävle is very beneficial to both municipalities; and we also would like to showcase it as an example of good international relations between municipalities."

Gounden said that Sida would issue a DVD and a brochure to document its partnership with the three municipalities. Sida's support of Buffalo City ends this month.