Is decentralisation consistent with development goals? What can we learn from Uganda? This paper from the Economic Policy Research Centre, Kampala, reviews Uganda’s experience of decentralisation to highlight its effects on the empowerment of local leaders and residents, local elite capture, service delivery and the promotion of sector responses. Uganda’s experience illustrates that decentralisation is consistent with economic and democratic development to an extent, but that there are potential problems, for instance in terms of local capacity and participation, which suggest that decentralisation should proceed gradually.
Uganda is considered a forerunner in Africa with respect to decentralisation. On the whole, the system of decentralisation has been fairly well established and has delivered improvements in service delivery and accountability. Numerous jobs were created in the process. However, it is highly conceivable that the achievements could have been much more pronounced, both in terms of quantity and quality, had the process been sequenced, with capacity building leading the way.
Decentralisation has contributed to improved service delivery, fostered participatory planning and heightened a sense of local ownership and improved accountability.
- Decentralisation has empowered citizens and increased responsiveness of public investment to local popular demands via better development of channels of communication.
- The focus of local government development grants have meant service delivery has greatly improved, particularly with respect to primary education, healthcare and water and sanitation services.
- Fiscal decisions in response to local development demands maximise the welfare of local residents but may not maximise economic growth for sustainable rural development and linkages to global opportunities.
- Project aid which bypasses local government systems has fragmented local development structures, undermined institutional growth and weakened community-local government linkages.
- Uganda’s decentralisation has given emphasis to upward accountability with the objective of ensuring that resources released from the centre are properly accounted for, but not necessarily deployed properly.
Uganda may have exhausted the main dividends of decentralisation under the prevailing political and economic conditions. It might well be that the remaining constraints to Uganda’s economic development are beyond the merits and demerits of either centralisation or decentralisation.
- Decentralisation is viewed as synonymous with autonomy but it can embroil local governments into a wider system of inter-governmental relations.
- Uganda runs the risk of excessive decentralisation, which could contribute to lowering local-level economic growth because it has created so many political districts.
- Increased political freedom and power at the local level have also affected the revenue base of local governments through inefficiency and corruption.
- Participation in global development processes may be beyond the reach of local actors. Caution must be exercised when deciding to decentralise or when flexing decentralised political powers to make economic choices.
- Capacity problems have persisted in Uganda, partially due to the fact that decentralised governance has promoted excessive emphasis on employing the indigenous residents of local government jurisdictions.
- Decentralisation should proceed gradually – countries should focus on other approaches of tackling the priority binding constraints to performance instead of seeing them as problems that decentralisation must resolve.
