Introduction
Centralized rule has been common in Africa, and almost all African countries implemented, constitutionally or otherwise, programs of centralization from the time they achieved independence from colonial rule.
They did so with the declared purposes of modernization, achieving economic development and nation building (Godefroidt, Langer and Meuleman 2016). However, these lofty goals were not achieved; African countries remain characterized by underdevelopment, lack of democratic rule, corruption and ethnic-based conflicts. Many blame the centralized and extremely bureaucratized government and governance systems and decision-making processes for worsening, if not causing, these problems (Addisson 1998; Jackson 2002).In the past three or so decades, therefore, there has been a general move in Africa towards decentralization and reducing bureaucracy. This trend is part of a global movement, based on the recognition that central government was too big, inaccessible, remote and inefficient in terms of bringing about development and democratic rule (Sharma 2009). Furthermore, thanks to advances in communication technologies, small subnational political units are now capable of efficiently delivering services and infrastructures that hitherto only national government could manage. Technological advancement, therefore, by diminishing the economic role of national government and, concurrently, enhancing the role that subnational political units play in economic matters, has further encouraged decentralization (Sharma 2009). Moreover, in the 1990s, international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (imf) put pressure on many African and other developing states to implement Structural Adjustment Programmes, one of the integral parts of which was decentralization, which became a requirement for securing loans from these institutions (World Banki999).
Many African states have therefore undertaken a restructuring of their territorial and government organizations (Gore 2000).
As part of this institutional reform, some African countries—for example, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan— have adopted federal-type arrangements. Others—such as South Africa and Kenya—have combined federal and unitary features. Another group of countries—such as Zimbabwe and Zambia—with predominately unitary systems introduced some form of multi-level government arrangements. All of them underscored the importance of allowing local government to enjoy a degree of political, financial and administrative autonomy.Several questions arise. First, what is the level of local autonomy in these countries? Is it real or just imagined? How has such autonomy impacted on the realization of objectives which necessitated state (re)organization? This chapter seeks to answer these questions by taking three African states—Ethiopia, South Africa and Zimbabwe—as case-studies. It provides an overview of each and outlines the political and economic motives that underpinned decentralization. It then describes the local government structure of each country and assesses whether local autonomy in is real or simply imagined both at consti- tution/statutory levels and in practice.
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