Decentralization in Sierra Leone - Research for Development

Decentralization in Sierra LeoneThe rollout of the programme was coordinated by the World Bank’s Institutional Reform andCapacity Building Project (IRCBP) through management units located in line ministries.Fiscal decentralization was coordinated by the Local Government Finance Department,(LGFD) located in the Ministry of Finance, while administrative decentralization wascoordinated through the Decentralization Secretariat (DecSec), located in the Ministry ofLocal Government 11 . Both units were staffed by Sierra Leonean professionals on consultancycontracts and the original plan was that they would be mainstreamed into their parent lineministries when the project was wound up. The IRCBP was originally set to run from 2004 to2009, but additional funding from the European Union (EU) and DFID from 2006 onwardspermitted an extension until June 2011.Seven years on from the inaugural local council elections, Sierra Leone has a fully functionaltier of town and district councils, a new and well-regulated system of fiscal transfers fromcentral to local government, much increased investment in local services, regular productionof participatory development plans, and a comprehensive monitoring system (CLoGPAS)rewarding the best performing councils with additional development grants. Some councilsalso have new office buildings and chambers. The change of government in October 2007brought no immediate changes to the programme; incoming President Ernest Bai Koromapledged in his inaugural address to Parliament that his administration would “strengthen localgovernment performance through enhanced decentralization and rural development”. Theprogramme passed another milestone in May 2008 when a second round of local councilelections was successfully completed.The Compromises of the Local Government ActIn spite of the successful rollout of the decentralization programme, it is still facing manychallenges. In particular, the LGA of 2004 represents a compromise between different visionsof decentralization. On the one hand, the Kabbah government viewed local councils first andforemost as development agencies. It had no intention of removing the hierarchy ofparamount, section and village chiefs from their colonially-wrought role as the state’sprimary agents for maintaining social order in rural areas. Sierra Leone’s Director of LocalGovernment made this view clear in an interview with the DFID Drivers of Change team in2005. “The local councils are for development”, he announced, “and the chiefdoms are forlaw and order”. This statement recapitulates the relationship between district councils and thechiefdoms in the late colonial era. The first district councils, initially forums for chiefs, wereincorporated in 1950 as the old Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone underwentadministrative unification in preparation for de-colonization. The economic development ofProtectorate had long been lagging behind that of the Colony and the British administrationdecided that it should have priority access to the colonial development funds that werecoming back on stream after the Second World War. The main function of a district council,according to the original District Councils Ordinance (no. 17 of 1950), was to “promote thedevelopment of the District and the Welfare of its people, with the funds at its disposal”. Thedistrict and town councils were inserted between central government and the chiefdoms andtheir primary activity was development planning and project implementation. Servicefunctions were added a few years later (Davidson, 1953; Zwanikken et al, 1994).The Kabbah government had survived the civil war with little de facto authority outside thecapital, so it is not hard to see why it was attracted to the idea of channelling post-war11 The official names of these ministries have changed over the last decade and simplified versions areused hereFanthorpe Consultancy Ltd Page 53