RAMP UP, the Regional Afghan Municipalities Program for Urban Populations, is a major local government capacity-building program in four regions in Afghanistan. ICMA has successfully implemented programs in Afghanistan since 2004 and is a key player on a RAMP UP implementation team headed by DAI as the prime contractor for the East, West, and North regions.

RAMP UP supports the U.S. government’s stated objective to promote a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people and can eventually function with limited international support. The program seeks to support the Afghanistan government in efforts to: 

• Increase the capacity of local-level officials, managers, and staff to perform  their core responsibilities effectively
• Improve municipal service delivery in ways that are responsive to citizens and enhance citizens’ perception of municipal governance
• Increase revenue at the local level, particularly by fostering and sustaining economic growth.

To achieve these three objectives, the RAMP UP team is undertaking the following activities: 

• Establish baselines against which each objective can be measured, using functional audits, citizen surveys, and other data-gathering methods.
• Deliver training in core skills and build Afghan training capacity (RAMP UP East, which got the earliest start, has trained dozens of municipal officials in public relations and public outreach, business registration, public works maintenance, construction management, and revenue enhancement).
• Design plans for improvement in service delivery, management systems, and economic development potential.
• Implement projects, including new and refurbished infrastructure and facilities, improved service delivery operations, and citizen outreach and service initiatives, using a “learning by doing” approach. Projects include construction of pedestrian sidewalks, drainage ditches, and car parking lots; road rehabilitation; trash collection systems; and park renovations.
• Assist national and local government in setting up a nationwide business registration system for local governments. The inititive is based on a pilot that resulted in the registration of 13,000 businesses in an eight-month period.

RAMP UP includes projects intended specifically to provide economic and social opportunities for women in culturally appropriate ways (parks, markets, cafes) and projects to engage youth (sports programs, skills development). Two additional cross-cutting themes are anti-corruption and conflict mitigation.

Afgan “ownership” is an underlying principle of RAMP UP. Most of the program’s employees are local hires, and the program seeks to engage a significant number of local Afghan firms in the implementation process. Utilizing ICMA’s methodology from the predessor program funded by USAID, the Afghanistan Municipal Strengthening Program (AMSP), RAMP UP embeds a team of Afghan staff in each municipality to assist the mayor and municipal staff to build capacity and carry out synergistic municipal improvement activities through a “learning by doing” approach to implementation.

RAMP UP also works in partnership with the United Nations and key Afghan institutions that have an impact on facilitating local governance, including Afghanistan’s Independent Directorate for Local Governance, the Ministry of Urban Development, the Ministry of Finance, and the Civil Service Commission, as well as mayors and other officials at the municipal level.