REPUBLIC OF RWANDAMINISTRY OF INFRASTRUCTURE

Urbanization Sector Wide Approach (U-SWAP) Secretariat

At the 2008 GoR and Development Partners Retreat (DPR), a communiqué was adopted regarding emerging issues for consideration at the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness.

A key issue raised in the communiqué was the lack of progress on the use of program-based approaches, and development partners and government re-committed themselves to develop and utilize SWAPs as a joint financing and programming mechanism.

The Sector-Wide Approach is a method of working between government and development partners.

According to the Aid Manual of Procedures, “the essence of a Sector-Wide Approach (SWAP) is for government and development partners to work together to implement a single sector strategy.

MININFRA and the World Bank are co-chairing the Urbanization and Rural Settlement Sector Working Group, a forum which brings together all key stakeholders in an effort to coordinate their respective initiatives.

A secretariat was established to facilitate coordination across urbanization and rural settlement programs.

 
Main objective
The main objective of the U-SWAP is to ensure effective functioning and coordination of Urbanization and Rural Settlement sector through Sector Wide Approach.

Specific objectives
1) Ensure effective functioning of Urbanization and Rural settlement Sector Working Group;
2) Ensure functioning of the National Human Settlement Steering Committee
3) Ensure horizontal and vertical coordination of urbanization and Rural Settlement Sector stakeholders and development partners
4) Ensure efficient communication of urbanization and rural settlement sector projects and achievements
5)Ensure that the U-SWAP secretariat is a cross sectoral coordination office of the sector SWG and TWGs To benefit from the inputs of the members of the SWG, the establishment of Thematic Working Groups (TWG) for key areas of the Urbanization and Rural Settlement Sector is ongoing as recommended by the SWG meeting of December 2015.

Three TWGs are being proposed namely Urbanisation, Rural settlement and housing and construction materials The TWGs will provide an opportunity to encouraging the members to step up their efforts to driving up the necessary level of synergy and involvement for a successful implementation of the sector
strategy and will mainly support the sector to:

- Identify and share best practices

- Identify and share bottlenecks and lessons learnt from challenges
- Advise on implementation of current sector strategies and plans
- Contribute to the design of sector strategies and policies (SSPs)
- Monitor progress in implementation of key sector strategies and plans
- Identify external factors that might influence the outcomes of the SSP