Abstract
Can fiscal and political decentralization help to circumvent or cauterize the problems of predation, authoritarianism, internecine conflict, social inequity, economic underperformance, and other governance failures that plague Africa’s neo-patrimonial states in general and natural resource-dependent countries in particular? This chapter explores that question by distilling lessons from the experience of Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, biggest economy, most populous country, and long-standing decentralized federal polity. Nigeria has granted extensive policy autonomy and fiscal resources to its subnational governments with some salutary effects, but without escaping the resource curse or attaining robust developmental or democratic governance. The chapter explores challenges and pathologies in the design of Nigerian fiscal decentralization that may account for the country’s predicament. Additionally, it explores the experiences of Ghana and Kenya, two new or prospective African oil exporters that have instituted significant experiments in good oil revenue governance and/or political decentralization.
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