In the context of the predominant decentralised approach by international development players, putting responsibility/ownership of development policies on partner countries in the South , regional and country based initiatives become crucial for policy making. This is true also for trade union organisations in the South, which will need to be more and more capable to influence national governmental policies.

Some very concrete needs emerged during the seminar, relating to the necessity to have a shared vision among African trade unions on development priorities, backed by reinforced technical and political capacity of organisations. In that sense, information exchange, sharing good practices and boosting monitoring and evaluation methodologies have been indicated as critical working areas.

Therefore, reinforcing coordination between national and regional level will be crucial for the latter to represent the specificities of the continent in terms of policy priorities vis-à-vis regional institutions. This is why one of the recommendations coming out from the seminar for the next future is aimed at setting up a “regional network on development cooperation” which could go precisely in this direction: granting coherence and coordination towards national affiliates and also allowing better cooperation with the existing TUDCN at global level. For sure one of the immediate challenges for action will be the post 2015 process.

Finally, fostering exchanges between trade unions and other Civil Society Organisations, particularly in the post Busan framework such as CPDE, have been highlighted. ITUC Africa, with their national affiliates will be involved to follow relevant work streams like the building blocks on effective institutions, transparency, gender etc. including South-South cooperation.

The perspective will be therefore to increase the support at regional level to facilitate the development network to become reality.

Article by Paola Simonetti, TUDCN ITUC