Ettamkeen El Mahalli - Local Governance in Tunisia

Five Tunisian municipalities supported in their transition to local governance
As part of the European program Ettamkeen El Mahalli supporting local governance in Tunisia (reference CE ENI/2022/431-503), IBF International Consulting engaged ArkoConsulting as a technical partner to provide long-term support — 60 months — to five municipalities in the Siliana governorate: Gaâfour, Bargou, Bou Arada, Laroussa, and Ania. 
Tunisian decentralization, initiated by the 2014 Constitution and the 2018 Local Authorities Code, has transferred expanded prerogatives to municipalities in territorial planning, public services, and participatory governance. In the Siliana governorate, five rural municipalities in northwest Tunisia needed to translate these new responsibilities into concrete operational capacities. 
The Ettamkeen El Mahalli program, funded by the European Commission, was designed to support this transition over a five-year period. ArkoConsulting contributed to all program components with two experts deployed throughout the duration. 
The scope of intervention includes support for developing local development plans for each of the five municipalities — from participatory territorial diagnostics to final strategic documents —, designing and deploying citizen field surveys (households, businesses, sectoral actors) with training for local enumerators, mapping local civil society actors, developing the monitoring tool, strategic program communication, producing reference manuals for managing development plans and external aid funds, and the cross-cutting integration of gender dimensions across all activities.