CoP-MfDR-Africa

Decentralization and local development: Ensuring Positive Outcomes

Dear Colleagues,

 

A few weeks ago, we asked members to submit topics that they wanted to talk about. One of the topics that came up that we haven’t really talked about in details is decentralization and development.  For several decades decentralization and local development have been encouraged in many African countries as a means for generating a dynamic approach to development by including local stakeholders and beneficiaries in project development and implementation. For most states and donors, creating a system of representation close to the people is supposed to promote both local development and democratization.

What do we mean by decentralization and local development?

For the purposes of this online discussion "decentralization" means delegation of skills and resources by central government to certain chosen communities. It is often seen as a way to generate greater public participation in the management of local affairs.

"Local Development" represents a development philosophy of a group of people organized at the local level to improve their welfare through a comprehensive development strategy.

In African countries where decentralization processes are underway, new actors have emerged: local elected officials, local NGOs, decentralized state actors, etc. New challenges also emerge with these new actors: i.e. the links between people's organizations (rural, urban) and existing councils, relationships between the local and national level in the distribution of powers and allocation of resources, etc.

Decentralization makes it possible to confer powers on local authorities, who are generally elected to exercise certain responsibilities within a local authority.  Through decentralization, many local authorities are conferred new powers pertaining to the collection of taxes and duties but also the development of a initiatives to improve people's access to services such basic infrastructure and health and education community facilities (health centers, schools), priority services, natural resource management, and managing collective investments (irrigation, micro-dams).

Sometimes that decentralization may seem at odds with local development efforts as imposed from outside (i.e. central government). Indeed, with the elections, the people who are given authority to manage municipal affairs may be punished (ie not reelected) at the end of their terms according to their achievements. However, they are often unprepared to deal with their new responsibilities. Coexistence between the different local development actors is not always harmonious. It raises at least three challenges:

1) The cohesion of the communal territories

Municipalities are sometimes newly established from successive redistributions, or even discredited by long periods of sub-administration. Hence the roles and responsibilities of different actors are not quite clear or not well established.


2) The dialogue between elected representatives and people

The election of municipal officials and the role assigned to the municipalities in local development do not necessarily always ensure transparent dialogue or public participation. But these are key elements and advantages of local development procedures. Therefore consultation mechanisms need to be put in place, but this can be tricky in very hierarchical societies where there is an unequal access of individual to free speech.  Consultation mechanisms are also difficult to implement in countries where political debates are particularly tense.

3) The skills, resources, and management of public goods

Decentralization reforms define new skills (responsibilities and areas of intervention) to municipalities without always giving them the means to exercise these new responsibilities. These methods depend on a redistribution of revenues between the state and local governments and increased tax revenues


Experience shows us that the newly municipalities rarely have capital and operating budgets and often do not possess adequate skills corresponding to their assigned missions. Particularly in regard to their ability to mobilize local budgets and manage them efficiently. Therefore, the resources of common good (budgets and human resources) are often dependant on donor funded initiatives.  

But how can we support local development without imposing a model of development from outside? How to support the initiatives of people respecting their choice of development?

With decentralization well underway and with the knowledge that in most cases, local capacities are weak, what are the best practices for feedback channels from local to national level and ensure that peoples’ needs are met?

Successful initiatives have the following aspects in common: they accompany communities to better organize themselves to take charge of their progress from:

On development approaches to promote solidarity and community self-promotion;
An analysis of priorities is done and business goals are clarified. All activities stem for this clarification of business goals.


To achieve this, officials, NGOs, donors should avoid guiding and directing development activities from above. They must become the points of support to local development by:

• supporting and encouraging local communities in their efforts to analyze and reflect on their priorities and
• providing technical support tailored to the progress of grassroots organizations while ensuring that their actions do not impede the freedom of local communities decision-making and do not create increased dependence.

Throughout this online discussion, we will ask you to share your experience about how decentralization and local development work together. Do decentralization initiatives work in your country (or not work)? What are the challenges to local development actors? Are there instances of local development management operating efficiently? What do you think the most compelling results in terms of local development initiatives? What methods and tools for local development seem to work?

This online discussion is intended as a platform for sharing best practices and tools in order to arrive, by consensus, to some conclusions about the impact, quality and the overall importance of the decentralization process and local development in achieving better development outcomes for African populations.

We are counting on you to share your views, ideas or suggestions on the different topics you would like to discuss in the context of this online discussion.

Hope to hear from you soon!

 

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sheka Bangura on February 23, 2012 at 2:22pm

Dear Hannah,

 

I just saw your blog and have had a cursory look. This is indeed topical. I will join the debate. More tomorrow.

 

Sheka

Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on February 23, 2012 at 3:10pm

Dear Sheka,

Sounds good! Thanks for your comment! Looking forward to hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Hannah

Permalink Reply by Sulleiman Adediran on February 23, 2012 at 4:42pm

Dear Hannah,

Yes, decentralisation indeed works. We have been working with establishing functional School-Based Management (SBM) systems in six states in  Nigeria in the last 3 years. Our approach has been  to get the local school communities to be engaged in the SBM policy formulation. This is a new approach as we engaged both the state actors and local communities  in a debate as to what powers the state actors were ready to devolve to the school community and at the same time-what responsibilities  the local stakeholders were  ready to shoulder. In the end, a set of roles  responsibilities were agreed to for the establishment of School Based Management Committees (SBMCs). We now have for each of the six states, a state-specific SBMC Policy domesticated from a national SBMC guidelines. A policy which was negotiated is more likely to be owned as against one which was handed down by higher authorities.

Some of the early positive results include: SBMCs with responsibilities for monitoring teacher absenteeism; SBMCs contributing to the development of School development Plan; Women effectively participating and contributing to debates and decision-making process; SBMCs engaged in enrolment drives; etc

Decentralisation may be slow but it works and indeed can potentially contribute to development

Sulleiman

Permalink Reply by Ibrahima Yade on February 23, 2012 at 6:24pm

Hi Hannah,

Thanks for this good presentation of a topic wich is very interesting for most of the African countries. I hope that you will excuse me for the poor quality of my English writing. As a Francophone I have some difficulties when communicating with Anglophones.

I think that we all agree that decentralization as define in this on line discussion should normally push to a higher level the development of local / rural communities. But in many West African countries the expected changes did not occur. In on country that I know better than others is the sub region, it is my understand that the decentralization is impede by :

  • an inadequation between the transfered competence or responsabilities and transfered resources for assuming those responsabilities
  • a lack of skills and qualification or unreadiness for their new roles, among many of the elected local authorities,
  • the insufficient clarification by the central authorities (Ministry of Finances) of the amount of collected taxes to be transferred to the local governments and the criteria which will be used to determine the amount that a local community will received. Therefore communities who are lead by the opposition will received less than communities governed by members of the political party at the central government

Also, as the topic of the debate is Decentralization and development, we would question the adhrence of the local governants to the good governance principals. We will then try to find if the local governants have tools for evaluating the quality of their governance or have feedback mechanism which will give them the basis to develop corrective actions.

Will add more comments in the coming days.

Regards. 

Ibrahima Yade 

  

 

Permalink Reply by Brian Lucas on February 24, 2012 at 5:26am

One of our researchers recently looked for evidence of the impact of decentralisation on development, especially social spending, and found that outcomes are quite mixed and even inconclusive.  Decentralisation alone does not necessarily lead to better outcomes; there are many other factors that also have to be in place.  For example, Shah, Thompson and Zou (2004: 12; see http://www.cesifo-group.de/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/1193506.PDF) write: ‘While in theory, [decentralisation] is expected to have positive impacts on the efficiency and equity of public service provision, in practice, these outcomes depend upon the existing institutional arrangements (including power relations) and coherence of decentralisation policies to create the proper incentive environment for bottom-up accountability.’

Some examples of factors that influence the success of local government structure in improving social spending include:

  • The institutional framework: the differences in professional capacities among public servants, the legal framework, the management systems, and the technical infrastructure (Cabrero and Carrera, n.d.).
  • The interrelationship between political, administrative and fiscal decentralisation: progress in one area without concurrent decentralisation in others is unlikely to reap benefits. Evidence shows that central governments have been slow generally to devolve fiscal responsibility particularly, so local governments’ expenditure autonomy remains limited (Dabla-Norris 2006).
  • In terms of fiscal decentralisation, the relationship between revenue and expenditure is important, e.g. transferring unrestricted, general-purpose revenues without negotiating expenditure responsibilities carries dangers (Peterson 1997).
  • The source of revenue itself is important, for instance, whether a budget is made up of locally-collected taxes or central allocations. In many countries, local governments have limited local tax capacity and are highly dependent on transfers from the central government, yet studies (e.g. Govil 2011) have shown that fiscal decentralisation through assignment of taxation powers is more effective in achieving desired outcomes as compared to transfer of grants.
  • There is a need for effective coordination between the different levels of government, particularly in federal systems. For instance, Nigeria’s constitution provides for the participation of all three tiers of government in the delivery of core public services, such as education and health. This makes policy coordination an important pre-condition for effective and efficient service delivery (Freinkman 2007).
  • The benefits of recent fiscal decentralisation can be distributed unevenly across sub-national governments, depending on the relative wealth of different states/regions in federal systems and how funds are allocated. For instance, in Nigeria, 54 per cent of federation account funds are distributed equally across states, which works against more populous states, and the allocation of oil revenues primarily benefits only four states (Freinkman 2007).

Our complete report is available at http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HD792.pdf.  You might also be interested in our overview of research on the impact of decentralisation on economic growth, http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HD791.pdf.

Brian Lucas
Governance and Social Development Resource Centre
www.gsdrc.org

Permalink Reply by Sheka Bangura on February 24, 2012 at 1:06pm

 

Dear Hannah,

 

Thanks once again for initiating the discussion on decentralisation.

 

Sierra Leone suffered protracted absence of local governance for 32 years before (1972-2004) due to patrimonial political system intended to centralise and monopolise political voices for the benefit of a few ruling elites. This was a key factor to the plunging of more than 80 percent of the population into poverty before the outbreak of the country's civil war in 1991.

 

Thus after the civil war in the early 2000s, a key reform that was undertaken to reduce poverty and ensure political stability was the resuscitation of local government through the re-establishment of local councils in 2004. This brought hope in terms of rural and community development--close to 70 percent of the population is in the rural area. Well, theoretically, decentralisation philosophy is indisputable; it has the answers to many poverty problems a nation witnesses. Practically, it is an empirical question.

 

Yes, Sierra Leone is seeing the fruits of decentralization to an extent. Local people are once again participating in development activities. Key development decisions are now taken at the local level. There has been an outgrowth of community decision taking organisations that contribute to the broader local development process. Projects decisions are initiated at local level and a great number of them are coordinated there in terms of implementation. There is growing presence of the media to facilitate community participation in development. Huge funding is coming from external sources towards this direction

 

However, has this translated into real welfare effects for the people? Yes, politically, at least the oppression and political manipulation that were experienced have been curtailed as there is ample freedom of expression locally--this brings health to the people in terms of promoting human dignity. But it is believed community participation is still very limited given the high illiteracy level (still hovering around 60 percent, by last estimate in 2004); this suppresses the confidence of most people to express their voices. Many believe that decentralisation in the current context mainly benefits local elite groups---sometime others see it as "devolution of corruption". The link between economic wellbeing of the people and decentralisation we are experiencing could be difficult to establish nationally. There are serious issues of equity at the local level as some communities are favoured at the expense of others because of bad local politics. Assessment of local (district) council performance but some councils at good ratings, others perform badly. Along these lines, it would be important to disaggregate statistics on community wellbeing by districts to attempt at establishing links between decentralisation and people's wellbeing.

 

Generally, there is improved access to social services in the country. But even this, there are equity issues.

 

As most funding is coming from donors, the vast proportion of which goes through NGOs, there has been serious rift between NGO operations and District Councils’ mandate. Accountability of NGOs is more effective towards donors. Their coordination by DCs (as it should be the case) is ineffective and this could cause double-dipping and oversubscription of development resources in favour of one community (or some) at the expense of others. Coordination between DCs and sectoral department is also a problem (there is power relations and exercise of authority problem)--sectoral departments still owes most of its allegiance to the central MDAs and this conflicts local development.

 

Let us continue the discussion. More to come.

 

Sheka   

Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on March 2, 2012 at 4:24pm

Dear Sulleiman, Ibrahima, Brian, and Sheka,

Thank you all so much for your comments and feedback on this discussion to date! Your views and experiences are hugely appreciated.

 

Brian – I think that you did an excellent job synthesizing the criteria necessary to put in place decentralization systems that work and lead to concrete outcomes – such as social spending.  Thank you also for sharing the publications – they are extremely useful and I encourage members to read them as well!

Sheka, Ibrahima, and Sulleiman – I really enjoyed learning about examples from your countries: Sierra Leone, Nigeria as well as the West African experience.

Two other examples also come to mind:

 

One is Imihigo in Rwanda – which have already discussed on this site - Imihigo, to quote AfCoP member Mugunga Matabaro, is: “a tradition that Rwanda has institutionalized as a means to enhance local government reform and stimulate development. It draws on a long-standing cultural practice in Rwanda whereby two parties publicly commit themselves to the achievement of a particular task. Failing to meet these public commitments leads to dishonor, not only for the individual party but for the community. Imihigo means a pronounced commitment.

 

Principles of Imihigo

Rwandans embrace Imihigo as a performance tool, following the principles below:

  • Voluntary: It is a choice of the citizens, guidance is provided to ensure national priorities are matching with local ones;
  • Ambitious: You promise/vow to achieve only what you do not already have;
  • Excellence: Imihigo is about outstanding performance: something worth of praise.

The role of citizens

Bottom-up approach is exercised during planning, implementation and evaluation stages of Imihigo.

The process begins at the lowest administrative entity-village level (umudugudu) whereby the community sits together with their local leaders and collectively analyse their problems, propose solutions into implementable actions and monitor implementation. Citizens at grassroots level prioritize activities that can address their major problems and challenges they encounter, activities which answer their problems and have requisite means and capacity for implementation are given higher priority. Priority activities citizens have no means or control to implement are submitted to the higher level (Cell/Akagari).for consideration in their Imihigo. The process goes like that up to the district level. Councilors who represent citizens in the higher levels follow up and ensure their priorities are considered by higher levels, and during their council meetings and accountability days (open days) they report what was considered by higher and give explaination if any priority was not considered. The administrative entity within the local government signs the imihigo with the subsequent administrative authority while councils ensure their implementation and reporting to the citizens. This has not only boosted local development in Rwanda but also, increased accountability – “principal and agent relations”.

At the district level, the imihigo is signed between the District mayor who represents the local government and the President of the Republic representing both electorate and the government. The signed contracts between the President and Mayors commit both central and local governments. The Central government ensures conducive environment is available to local government - avail the necessary funding and other assistance to the district in time in order to achieve the set targets within the time frame.

Imihigo is evaluated quarterly by all authorities in each administrative entity as auto-evaluation at local government level. Thereafter, each administrative entity is evaluated by the next higher level to measure performance realized visa-a-vie pledges made. At district level, despite evaluation made by the council, national evaluation is carried out twice a year by quality assurance team comprised of experts from the President’s Office, the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Local Government, ministry of Finance, Rwandese Association for Local Government, civil society and private sector. Presenting official evaluations of the district is concurrently conducted with signing the new performance contract (imihigo) and with the President of the Republic and hence re-launch the cycle. This ceremony is always live and citizens are not only represented during the ceremony but also contribute ideas by calling on tall-free phone.

As one District Mayor explained, “Imihigo is a response to the problems in our community. Imihigo is both a rights-based planning tool, as well as a social contract between parties. The overall aim of Community Dialogue is to increase the level of concern in community about the issues that affect them and to catalyze actions that improve their standards of living”.

It is necessary to understand the difference between the action plan and imihigo. The action plan is a set of activities supposed to be realized within a determined period, in this particular case a period of one year, whereas imihigo are a subset of the action plan showing priority activities to be used as a performance measure.

The action plan may contain additional number of activities of routine nature such as payment of wages and salaries whereas the imihigo are mainly focused on key activities that have a significant impact on economic development and poverty reduction, good governance and social welfare.”

(To read more, click here.)

 

A second example is Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) in Namibia. (Disclaimer – I used to live in Namibia and work on CBNRM projects).

Namibia is an interesting and perhaps unique case.  Namibia is currently divided between commercial (i.e. individually owned) and communal land. The communal land structure is a remnant from South African rule and its apartheid government. Once Namibia won its independence, in 1990 the government set about creating new mechanisms to manage natural resources focused on sustainable development as well economic development. The model that they developed is called a conservancy.

In 1996, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism passed the Nature Conservation Amendment Act, which built in to the policy on Wildlife Management, Utilisation and Tourism in Communal Areas of 1995. The Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism gives this definition of a conservancy: “A conservancy consists of a group of commercial farms or areas of communal land on which neighbouring land owners or members have pooled resources for the purpose of conserving and using wildlife sustainably. Members practise normal farming activities and operations in combination with wildlife use on a sustainable basis. The main objective is to promote greater sustainable use through cooperation and improved management.

Conservancies are operated and managed by members through a Conservancy Committee.”

The legislation enables conservancies to:

  • use, manage and benefit from wildlife on communal land;
  • propose recommendations for quotas for wildlife use and decide on the form of use; and
  • enter into agreements with private companies and establish tourism facilities within the conservancy boundaries.

Conservancies offer people an opportunity to make decisions about the management of natural resources in their areas. Through tourism and other spin-off activities (such as trophy hunting and craft sales) conservancies aim to create employment, or for the community to receive other benefits.

To learn more about conservancies and CBNRM, click here!

I have a few more questions that I would like to put forward for discussion. These questions should help us establish a bit of a baseline:

  • How would you rate the better the current state of decentralization in your country (low, medium, high)? Why? Could you elaborate more?

 

  • Does your government have an approach that encourages local development?

 

  • Do you feel there is a momentum to local development and, if so, in what way?

 

I look forward to hearing from you!

 

Hannah

Permalink Reply by Viviene Charity Simwa on March 4, 2012 at 10:31am

From the time of independence, the government of Kenya has been attempting to create structures that would decentralize development efforts from the national  to the devolved level . Indeed, by 1983, the District Focus  for Rural Development (DFRD) was introduced to address this issue  though  its implementation faced  challenges in terms of transferring resources from the central to the district levels.

Another attempt at transferring resources to the devolved level was the introduction of Constituency Development Funds (CDF). This was a legislation that set aside a  percentage of  government budget (2.5%) for Constituency development. ( a constituency is an electoral area represented by member of parliament. Kenya has 210 constituencies though this is set to increase with the implementation of the 2010 Constitution).

After several years of listening to the feedback from communities, the same was incorporated  into the  Kenya 2010 Constitution which  provides the country with a great opportunity for implementing the devolve system of governance.

The 2010 Constitution provides a framework for devolution and access to services to the counties which are distinct and interdependent and expected to related to the national government on the basis of mutual consultation and cooperation. The national  government  shall ensure reasonable access to services in all parts of the republic. What is provided by the constitution is highly rated by many in the country though it is yet to be implemented. This was evidenced by the overwhelming support for the constitution during the referendum

Chapter 11 of the Constitution sets out the objective of the  Devolved governance as:

  • Promote democratic and accountable  exercise of power;
  • Foster national unity by recognizing diversity;
  • Give power of self governance to the people and enhance participation of the people in the exercise of the powers of the state and in making decisions affecting them; r
  • Recognize the right of communities to manage their own affairs to further their development;
  • Protect and promote the interests and rights of minorities and marginalized communities;
  • Promote social and economic development and the provision of proximate, easily accessible services throughout Kenya;
  • Ensure equitable sharing of national and local resources throughout Kenya;
  • Facilitate the decentralization of State organs, their functions and services from the capital; and 
  • Enhance checks and balances and separation of powers.

Kenyans from all walks of life are eagerly waiting for the implementation of devolution. Especially for areas that have felt traditionally neglected, devolution is providing a fresh breath of air. There is eagerness amongst different players especially amongst the non-state actors who see this as an opportunity to expand and capture new markets for their products.

Moving to counties also mean increased opportunities for employment and businesses. Some organizations are already positioning themselves to decentralize to the counties even though elections are yet to be held and the counties are not yet operational.

Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on March 5, 2012 at 10:12am

Dear Colleagues,

Mugunga also posted an interesting reply to this discussion - which can be found here: http://www.cop-mfdr-africa.org/forum/topics/we-the-people-engaging?...

Thank you!

Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on March 14, 2012 at 11:08am

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you again for all of your contributions on this topic to date!

We'd like to try to delve in a bit more with the following questions:

• How would you describe the  relationships between different categories of local actors such as rural organizations, elected officials, politicians, government technical services, local authorities (village chief, religious leaders), and administrative authorities? Do they work harmoniously? Do they encourage local initiatives? To what extent are they involved in planning these initiatives?

• Are discussion forums, consultation, negotiations, and decision making are in place and operating effectively? Are there any mechanisms to manage conflict?

• What are some existing financial resources currently in place to fund local development initiatives:
* internal sources (taxes, contributions, savings, and income from collective activities ...)
* external sources (contributions from the central government, development partners, etc...).

• What entities and procedures are in place for local management of these funds?

• Are the methods and tools of these various bodies effective?  If yes, how and in what way? If no, why not? Are these local development initiatives managed with a results focus? 

Looking forward to your feedback and thoughts!

Many thanks and kind regards,

Hannah

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