Reports
Japan's Municipal Resource Management for Development Cooperation: The Output and Mechanism
2006 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 155-170
Details
2006 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 155-170
As stated in Japan's New ODA Charter, a municipality is one of the valuable resources for development cooperation. But in reality, Japanese municipalities are restricted in human resources, foreign languages, and technical applicability to developing countries. Given those conditions, how can the experience and know-how of Japan's municipalities contribute to development of developing countries? This paper tries to examine the management of those municipal resources from an analysis of two projects on local administration in Thailand, and to propose a mechanism for maximizing the output from those resources.
The mechanism consists of four factors. First of all, it is necessary to grasp the decentralization policy of each developing country and clarify the positioning of cooperation, which defines the framework of the project output and resource utilization. The second factor is strategic input of Japan's municipal resources toward several targets in the developing country. For example, a training program in Japan targeting both a local administration and rural people can be effective as a common experience and will promote consideration of a regional plan reflecting local needs and resources. Moreover, combining a training program in Japan and dispatching an expert enables training participants to follow up by applying lessons of the training program to their own local development. Thirdly, a coordinator-type expert, well versed in the needs of the developing country, plays an essential role in managing both the timing of training programs and experts. Lastly, it is recommended to make the most of local experts to connect lessons of the training program in Japan with local conditions.
The above mechanism cannot be applied everywhere as it is. It is important to adapt each factor to the conditions of the country and to consider the timing of application of the factors to guarantee the function of the mechanism as a whole.
