By Nick Mann | 22 October 2012
A new organisation aimed at reducing poverty and developing local economies in sub-Saharan Africa by improving how local government services are delivered is being launched this week.
The African Commission for Local Government Improvement will offer countries advice and support from academics, consultants and business leaders with expertise in Africa to improve skills and financial management at a local government level.
Countries will also be given the opportunity to share best practice with each other while the organisation plans to work with government ministers to address what it sees as the ‘disconnect’ between central and local government that means service delivery is often neglected entirely.
ACLGI chief executive and president Dr Olubunmi Ajayi told PF International that, while international aid donors had achieved some success in public sector reform in Africa, most of these successes had not filtered down to local government level.
‘It doesn’t really trickle down systematically and that is a real problem in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa because what it means is there is still a lack of strong, stable and efficient local governments,’ she explained. ‘This means that citizens get poor, or no, services and, in extreme cases, local government is virtually non-existent as a function and there is hardly anybody in the office.’
Local government has a key role to play addressingthe varied social and economic challenges facing sub-Saharan African countries, Ajayi said. ‘But to have strong local government institutions you’ve got to have strong local government finance systems, because you need good fiscal governance to plan and deliver public services.
‘The administration of the finances is absolutely critical to getting anything done, but there are challenges like corruption, poor leadership and a lack of political will.’
To address this, a key part of the ACLGI’s work will focus on both political and administrative leadership. Ajayi said this was ‘grounded on the theory that local government reform and implementation can be brought to scale more rapidly, resulting in greater impact at community level, when ministers for local government and their administrative colleagues identify and act on their own government’s priorities’.
Working with expertise from bodies including CIPFA, the African Union and Grant Thornton, the ACLGI will also aim to professionalise the local government finance function to ensure skills and qualifications are used to drive improvements in how services are delivered.
‘Professionalisation requires qualifications and specialisations. But it goes beyond this to being about changing the culture, attitudes and behaviours of the people and for me it’s about injecting the ethos of public services back into the system,’ Ajayi said.
The ACLGI is also looking at ways to share best practice about how citizens can be engaged in the service improvement process. ‘Any attempts at sustainable improvement and strengthening of local government institutions must be citizen-centred,’ Ajayi explained. ‘We are looking at innovative ways to encourage citizens to work with local government as co-creators of improvement and to come and test out ideas for improvement and service transformation working in partnership.’
This would enable Africa to move away from the ‘Euro-centricity’ of development, she said. ‘Implementing public service reform in the UK is so different from implementing it in Nigeria, for example, because here you havethe political will, compliance and better implementation capability.’
The formal launch of the ACLGI will take place in the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday, with a discussion of the issues associated with improving local government service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa.
