The 7th Local Economic Development Forum will be held in South Africa

The seventh edition of the World Forum on Local Economic Development (LED) will take place in Johannesburg, Gauteng (South Africa), from 12 to 15 October 2027. This Forum was born, already with the presence of ORU Fogar, in Seville in 2010 thanks to the very decisive impetus of the Andalusian Fund of Municipalities for International Solidarity (FAMSI). Since then, it has followed an itinerary through Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil), Turin (Italy), Cabo Verde and Córdoba (Argentina), before returning once again to Seville in 2025. It will be the second time that the Forum is held in an African country, which will inevitably put the focus on the role that local and regional governments can play in the development of the continent’s economy.

The Forum is a leading international space that brings together thousands of public and private actors to drive development from the territories. Its fundamental purpose is to foster the exchange of good practices, establish strategic alliances and reach direct agreements among local, regional and global actors.

Since its establishment in 2010, the Forum has been driven by a solid coalition that unites the local and regional world —represented by UCLG, Famsi and ORU Fogar—, with the valuable backing and support of United Nations agencies such as UNDP and the ILO. On this occasion, in Johannesburg, the host is the South African Local Government Association (SALGA). It will be worth listening to SALGA, which, beyond pointing out the need to turn territorial governments into actors that foster development, is calling for progress towards an open African market.

To gauge the scale of the Forum, it is worth noting that more than 2,000 representatives of local and regional governments, as well as of international and civil society organisations, from more than 100 countries took part in the 6th Forum in Seville. ORU Fogar’s participation was especially visible. A total of 31 regional speakers were present in the debates. The organisation was particularly involved in the thematic axes of food security, gender equality, tourism and border development, contributing regional voices and perspectives in these spaces of the programme. And ORU Fogar members held 51 B2B meetings, among which stand out those that decentralised cooperations such as the Andalusian, Basque or Extremaduran held, as well as with the Global Fund for Cities Development, UNDP, or the ILO.

At the Forum, ORU Fogar has always advocated strategies to bring development to every corner of the territory. From this perspective, the organisation has placed special emphasis on territorial cohesion and on the determined fight against rural exodus, warning of the risks of depopulation and asserting the strategic role of regional and local governments in demographic and economic rebalancing.