Decentralization is defined as a process through which authority and responsibility for some

functions are transferred from the central government to local governments, communities and
the private sector. Improving poverty alleviation is behind most decentralization efforts is
that these services are consumed locally.

Poverty is general scarcity, dearth, or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material
possessions or money. It is a multifaceted concept, which includes social, economic, and
political elements.

To the large extent decentralisation has led poverty reduction in Uganda as presented
below;

Promoting opportunities decentralisation has led to giving poor people the chance to
improve their material situation of life, and this includes providing access to employment,
markets, financial services, infrastructure (roads, electricity, telecommunication), social
services (education, health care), and land. Decentralisation brings about increased
opportunities for people to participate in public decision-making, from which they are
generally excluded in a highly centralised government system

Facilitating empowerment decentralisation has increases the inclusion of all people in a

society in decision-making processes in order to achieve responsive and accountable public
actions and policies.

Non-discrimination, good governance and the rule of law are key in this regard;
decentralisation is also a key factor in generating appropriate incentives for service provision.
In general, accountability of local governments requires that they have access to significant
own-source revenues at the margin, to ensure that hard-budget constraints can be made
effective.

Enhancing security has been crucial in reducing poor peoples vulnerability to different
threats, like economic shocks, natural disasters, ill health, disability and personal violence.
This requires macroeconomic policies to manage the risk of economy-wide shocks,
diversification of household activities, a public welfare system and a range of insurance
mechanisms hence eradicating poverty.

Optimal allocation of resources; is achieved when public expenditure mandates are

allocated to the government level that most closely represents the beneficiaries of these
outlays. A proper assignment of expenditure mandates should also consider specificities in
the production structure of the public goods and services, including the presence of
economies of scale, spillover benefits and the level of administration costs.

Effectively poverty alleviation; decentralisation has contributed to the strong and continuous
expansion of Ugandas local governments. This expansion took root as the government
focused its economic program, supported by donors, more intently on poverty reduction in
the second half of the 1990s. As the countrys grass-root-based Poverty Eradication Action
Plan (PEAP) was launched in 1997, Uganda scaled up significantly the resources allocated to
delivering pro-poor spending, in particular those identified and tracked under the Poverty
Action Fund (PAF), which received strong financial backing and attention by the
international donor community.

Primary education has been a top priority in Uganda, and the most important expenditure
responsibility assigned to local governments. The institutional assignment is, however,
complicated. As noted earlier, while local governments are formally mandated to provide
primary education and some services at the secondary and tertiary education levels, the
central government level has the entire responsibility for the funding of the sector.

Decentralisation has heightened attention paid to education in Uganda since the mid-1990s
has yielded positive results. The introduction of the UPE program in 1997, aimed at
providing free primary education to Ugandan children, generated a boom in primary school
enrollment almost immediately hence poverty alleviation.

However to some extent, decentralisation has not promoted poverty alleviation in

Uganda based on the following reasons

Dispersed power, both geographically and institutionally: Decentralization inevitably

changes the location of power and jobs. Movement geographically or across tiers of
government is often impeded by issues related to statute, prestige and poor labor mobility.

Corruption, Patronage, and Clientelism; Even though it is hard, if not impossible, to tell
whether there is more or less corruption today, decentralisation is likely to have increased the
number of people with access to public resources. But it is equally likely to have decreased
the amounts used for private gain.
Local governments do not dispose of full autonomy in local decision-making. Although
the responsibility for the majority of publicly provided services was transferred downwards,
the central government, and especially the line ministries, still exert considerable influence.
On the one hand, the centre sets national priorities and determines sectoral guidelines, which
have to be adhered to by local governments even if they would set their priorities differently

Can increase administrative costs: Creating additional layers of government is an

expensive proposition, and while the central government - in the best of cases- might reduce
its role and shed personnel in the context of decentralization, empirical evidence suggests that
these workers are often reabsorbed by local governments. There is thus no net change in
public sector employment. In the worst of cases, central government employment remains
unchanged, while local government employment grows.

Local authorities lack an effective cash planning system. In fact, most subnational
governments do not forecast their intra-year disbursements or plan their use rather, they wait
for cash to arrive, and then choose how to spend it.

Negligence; Decentralization was in some cases intended to strengthen the political power of
lower tiers of government vis--vis the center, it has also increased the possibility of political
capture within these lower tiers. In Uganda established village governments with locally-
chosen village heads accountable to village councils that would determine budget priorities.
Since village heads choose the members of the council, accountability to the villagers is
weak; only 3 percent of the village proposals were included in the district budgets.

Financial constraints; decentralisation of finances to local governments continues to be a

major challenge in the implementation of decentralisation in Uganda. Local governments are
still unable to mobilise adequate local financial resources more than 15 years after they were
formed, and those resources have further been constrained by the politically influenced policy
decision to remove the graduated tax which previously constituted the lions share of the
locally generated revenues

Lack of Education, Experience, and Information; In addition to the shortage of financial

resources, local governments also struggle with a shortage of educated and experienced
manpower. Both politicians and civil servants are often inadequately trained, which is not
surprising given the relatively low level of education in Uganda.
Regional inequalities; Poorer regions like Karamoja are less successful in favor of their poor
areas and decentralisation generated substantial inequality in public spending in poor areas.
Therefore decentralisation resulted in lower level of public services in poorer regions. a host
of other problems, not associated with service delivery, have nevertheless helped to
undermine service delivery in decentralizing economies.

Lack of monitoring and evaluation; there is lack of adequate monitoring of policies and
services for example even if poor citizens can hold politicians accountable, the politician in
turn may not be able to hold the provider accountable. The Minister of Education in the
capital city will not be able to monitor school teachers in rural primary schools. Unless there
is a mechanism by which clients can monitor and discipline the providers (that is, the short-
route of accountability is working), the result is that teachers are absent, and primary
education suffers.

Misalignment between the structure of the government bureaucracy and the assignment
of service responsibilities to different tiers confuses incentives, weakens accountability for
service delivery, and creates conflicts of interest instead of checks and balances. In many
parts of the world for example, in Uganda administrative staff of sub- national governments
are either directly appointed by an upper-tier government or belong to a national service and
are on the payroll of the central government. In these cases, local staff continue to respond to
the incentives provided by upper-tier governments. The decentralization to local tiers has
been incomplete with local staff still part of a provincial administrative cadre. Their incentive
has been to claw back powers from the local level to the provincial one.

Misallocation and misuse of resources; substantial public expenditures are systematically

misallocated, for example to wage bills for bulky state administrations, to farm subsidies that
impose distortionary costs on the economy and fail to benefit the poor, and to large
infrastructure projects that allow political rent extraction without creating sustainable assets,
all at the expense of quality public services.

In conclusion, weaknesses in poverty alleviation outcomes as a result of decentralisation can

be attributed to a breakdown in one or both of the links along the long route of
accountability. For instance, the fact that public spending on health and education mainly
benefits the non-poor reflects the inability of citizens, especially poor citizens, to hold
politicians accountable for resource allocation decisions.
References

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Ayee, J. (2004), Ghana: A Top-Down Initiative in Olowu, D & Wunsch, eds., Local
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Olowu, D & Wunsch, J. (2004). Local Governance in Africa. The Challenges of Democratic
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Shah Anwar, ed. (2006). Local Governance in Developing Countries. Public Sector
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Smoke, P. (2003). Decentralisation in Africa: goods, dimensions, myths and challenges.

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