Decentralisation as a Strategy for Development

Abstract

Despite the benefits that decentralisation is said to be capable of bringing about, attempts at decentralisation in Africa have brought no marked improvement in development drives.  Policy-makers and development administrators in Africa continue to express dissatisfaction with the way decentralisation policies have been implemented.   Decentralisation policies that were introduced transferred functions and responsibilities to lower levels of government without the transfer of corresponding measures of financial, human and material resources. In much the same way, attempts at decentralisation in Ghana since independence have proved ineffective and problematic. Consequently, an important question since independence has been; what kind of decentralisation is appropriate to our circumstances?  That this question is still relevant today amounts to a general admission that the forms of decentralisation programmes we have experimented in Ghana over the past years had failed to achieve expected results. It is against this background of failure of decentralisation programmes in Ghana, that the P.N.D.C. government introduced its decentralisation policy with the establishment of the District Assemblies (D.A.s) in 1989.  The P.N.D.C.’s decentralisation programme came with certain measures calculated to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the D.A.s.  Notwithstanding the measures taken, the D.A.s remained ineffective and inefficient because the functions and responsibilities transferred to them were not accompanied by corresponding measures of financial, human and material resources. The situation improved for the better with establishment of the District Assemblies Common by the 1992 Constitution. Nevertheless, issues concerning decentralisation have continued to generate academic debate in the realm of theory and practice.

Key words: Decentralisation, development administration, policy-makers.