As 2007, is the half way mark of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the hopes of Africa ever meeting the MDGs by the set deadline continue to dwindle. However, if African governments reverted their efforts, by localizing the goals to be fully owned by the people, then the 2015 target would be met, if not all then halfway.
The secretary general of the United and local government of Africa believes and is determined that if local authorities have enough resources and the capability to achieve the MDG’s.
Jean-Pierre Elong Mbassi says that the resources exist within our governments, but only raises issue with the manner in which governments utilize these resources.
Local government is the sphere of government closest to the people. Many basic services are delivered by local municipalities and local ward councilors are the politicians closest to communities.
Even though development experts contend that there has been progress, slow though, there is still more that African governments need to do to ensure that the goals are achieved by the 2015 target.
The MDGs in question are an initiative of the United Nations and seek to rid the world off poverty. Eight goals were agreed upon by UN member countries in 2000 and they include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, promote gender equality and empowerment of women, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. Others are combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development, all these by 2015.
To put it in simple terms, “localizing MDGs means making sense of the global and national targets locally – understanding how these global objectives relate to local needs, checking where the community is vis-à-vis MDG targets.
Africa can still make more progress and it is in this aspect that local authorities come in, it is established that in Africa over 70 percent of the population dwell in rural areas, the chain of communication and exploitation of resources is tilted to the advantage of those in the urban centers and majority of urban dwellers are never involved consulted as to possible ways to improve their lives especially eradication of poverty.
Considering that over 70 percent of the resources in any government go to the Local governments the goals could fit in well with better expertise.
Although this accounts for only 5 percent allocated to Local authority, of the national budget in Kenya, Mumbi Ngaru, a former councilor of Thika town council says that the need to increase the resources to at least 15 percent would be more efficient.
On the other hand, Mumbi in every sense is right to say that this sector be endowed with more resources, but whether the councils have the capability to handle these resources is also an issue, but one that can be handled.
It’s a big set back that in our contemporary times, we are still losing women during child birth, and that there are people in the slums who still live without a decent meal, yet there are a lot of resources being mismanaged within our governments.
However, within Sub-Saharan Africa, there is quite varied performance and there have been some countries that have shown quite strong growth, with rising per capita incomes, while others have experienced stagnant or declining growth.
Country performance has been quite varied. The Global Monitoring Report, commissioned by the world Bank, shows that trends in income growth in recent years have been very encouraging in Sub-Saharan Africa, and there is evidence of poverty reduction in some African countries, not only in the more rapidly growing regions of East Asia and South Asia.
There have also been several countries in Africa for whom recent survey data reveals quite remarkable progress in the human development indicators. Madagascar is one of such countries, since 1997, it has experienced a 6 percent annual decline in child mortality.
That is a very rapid rate that is very encouraging. South Africa has been able to reduce the incidence of measles by 90 percent since 2000. Mozambique is another example where the poor are clearly benefiting from human development efforts.
Immunization coverage has improved by 18 percent annually between 1997 and 2003 among the poorest households in the country, which is four times as fast as the national average. So it is true that regionally Africa faces the most daunting challenges to meet the MDGs.
However, it is a diverse region, and many countries are achieving remarkable progress. We need to learn more from those examples and try to replicate this positive experience elsewhere.
For instance the Ugandan government stands out as an example in utilizing of the resources available, in that it sent resources down to the local and posted in community centers that the resources and amount of resources made available and quite rapidly that the amount went from 20 cents on the dollar to 90 cents on the dollar.
So this signals a number of different messages, the first is that global transparency in terms of getting resources used effectively. The second one is when the institutional arrangement functions effectively.
Then money can in fact pass through public systems and be used for poverty reduction, and indeed that strengthening public systems is key to scaling up the resource transfers because they are a cost-effective way if they work well.
Then that there can be real advantage in working in bottom-up service delivery approaches, for example, providing grants directly down to the lowest tier of local government's on some sort of formula basis or activities
Linking these goals with the local Government projects would be a noble idea, but the need for citizens to also own these projects first and stop focusing on the national level and go back to the level of the common man is paramount.
A large number of people still do not understand that their decisions matter in all the resources allocated to the municipalities.
On the other hand the law only guarantees political participation through civic elections, as is assumed that councillors effectively represent citizens,” Yet these councillors also rarely hold consultative meetings in their respective wards.
Mumbi sums the situation up as follows: “For in stance in Kenya the Citizens' participation in decision making in the local authorities has been elusive, except during elections when citizens participate in electing their councillors”.
Once this is done they are never consulted in any decisions that affect them. Indeed, the Local government Act also makes no reference to citizens’ participation.
It allows, but does not require the local authority to publish a summary of a budget estimates in a local newspaper, Mumbi adds.
Also, only for a fee must the local authority provide a copy of the annual estimates if requested.
Local citizen’s can only attend full Council meetings as observers. They cannot, however, attend any committee meetings as these are held behind closed doors as closed sessions.
Now for this to change, then there need to be that full participation of the people, and also to know what exactly these goals are, to be in a position to demand and dictate that particular projects be done in a manner to satisfy their needs.
Along with the political liberalisation, the shifting emphasis in development discourse and towards promoting more socially equitable economic growth and meeting the basic needs of the poor has created pressures for a wider participation of the people in decision-making.
Participation and decentralization are considered to have a symbiotic relationship, as successful decentralization requires some degree of local participation.
In relation to this, the Kenyan government required that the local authorities produce a Local Authority Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP) together with the local organisations, groups and associations.
In the first year of LASDAPs (2001/2002) more than 27,000 individuals participated in all together 900 meetings.
Participant groups included market and trader associations, women's groups, self-help groups, handicapped groups, neighbourhood groups, health and medical groups, churches and schools.
Elected representatives both national and local also took part, together with some government officials.
It also means that the people come up with ideas of how to achieve the targets that are important for the community, working together to implement these ideas and regularly looking back to ensure that the actions do indeed lead towards achievement of the common goals.
In addition to this, they should use MDG indicators as part of a situation assessment carried out during the initial planning stages to help focus and analyze local development potential on clear developmental targets.
This would also help generate relevant data that both allows establishing clear priorities for local development and expresses development objectives in MDG terms from the very beginning of the planning process.
For instance within their jurisdictions the Local Authorities in Kenya, are charged with the responsibility for providing services such as health, primary education, refuse collection, water and sanitation, and fire protection services among others.
However, over the years the service delivery capacity of local authorities has deteriorated to the extent that even the most basic services are not always provided.
Central government is forced therefore to fill in the gaps in service delivery when it comes to water and health services for instance.
The reasons for the poor state of service delivery by the local authorities are many, explains Mumbi.
Firstly, the existing facilities in most local authorities were not planned to cater for such an amount of people now residing in the municipal areas.
“The high population growth rates are mainly the result of the expansion in commerce and industrial development”.
Secondly, the local government capability to provide services is hindered by insufficient resource base, mismanagement, weak technical and institutional capacity to increase service coverage, and lack of planning and foresight.
Even with several cases of corruption and mismanagement within the local government set up, Elong Mbassi, still believes that such past cases of mismanagement of funds could in itself be a step, and that all Africans needed was to put up better mechanisms to monitor how the resources are utilized.
It is also of importance to train our personnel, and not to assume that every one understands what these goals are, and then we will know what we are dealing with,” he added.
In retrospect, the goals are achievable, but the need to also focus on results rather than meeting the target, if we do not meet the deadline of 2015, we can still look back, to say that indeed improved someone’s life.
