Two cities, Swakopmund and Malmö, in Namibia and Sweden have developed a strong mutual partnership on sustainable development. The collaboration started within The Municipal Partnership Programme at the Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy (ICLD), working with poverty reduction through local democracy development funded by SIDA. The municipal partnership aims to increase civil influence by strengthening local and regional political governance organization within certain core areas, e.g. equity/inclusion, transparency, possibility to demand accountability and/or citizen participation. During 2012-2014 the two cities collaborated on two projects; Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Eco Tourism. 

The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of processes and learning outcomes of SDG 17 in a mutual municipal partnership in the ESD-project focusing experiences on challenges and solutions. Eight project team member i.e. municipal officials, teachers, museum- and marine pedagogues, as well as three senior municipal officials in the Project Steering Committee were interviewed using semi-structured questions in the second year of the ESD-project. A phenomenographic approach was applied to analyse the transcriptions of nearly six hours recorded interview material. The findings show the experience of various challenges the respondents faced, how the challenges were solved and the benefits of the learning outcomes. This were discussed also in longer terms to shed light on what South and North can learn from one another by being in a mutual partnership, focusing how work processes contribute to develop democratic governance locally in the municipalities.