The project’s goal is to enhance the capacity of Liberian Counties to meet service delivery requirements under the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) and the County Development Agendas (CDAs).

With more than 80 percent of the housing stock and critical infrastructure in Liberia either destroyed or in various states of disrepair, weak urban policy and governance structures only serves to undermine reconstruction efforts. Years of public mismanagement have left the Liberian administration system unable to implement a plan for equal growth. Furthermore, an absence of local and national leadership has served to undermine institutional capacity which in-turn has further undermined assistance efforts. The lack of effective government capacity has allowed Liberia's reconstruction and development partners to pursue, by default, their own objectives at the local level given the lack of local institutional capacity. Furthermore, the absence of a coherent framework and implementation programme for critical sectors has tended to scatter government’s development efforts, a situation exacerbated by the lack of credible local capacity.

The goal of the Strengthening County Institutional Capacity for Service Delivery Project is to enhance the capacity of Liberian Counties to meet service delivery requirements under the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) and the County Development agendas (CDAs). It aims at improving the quality of local governance by:

1. Building local capacities which enhance leadership, through the promotion of key competencies in local leadership,
2. Enhancing the capacity of counties to promote local economic development and
3. Strengthening the financial management abilities to better plan, manage and implement a broad range of services and projects for the benefit of communities.

This project was initiated on 1 May 2009 and is expected to run for a period of 20 months. The output of the project will be enhanced training capacities for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as enhanced capacity for county based development and administrative management.