Decentralization In Ghana Research Articles

Three decades of decentralisation in Ghana: operationalisation of sub-district structures in three selected regions

Three decades of decentralisation in Ghana: operationalisation of sub-district structures in three selected regions

Exploring the state of solar photovoltaic decentralization in Ghana: trends and success factors

This research explores the trends of photovoltaic (PV) decentralization in Ghana and provides an updated illuminating insight into the sector. A literature review was carried out to understand and map out the trends, risks, and success factors. Additionally, time-series analysis was used to explore the installation trends from 2013 to 2019. A one-sample t-test was used to test the significance of each of the underlying indicators. The study identifies 2015 and 2018 as the years with the highest PV installations. On regional distribution, the research identified Central (63.25%), Greater Accra (26.44%), and Upper East (3.99%) as areas with the highest cumulative rate of a PV installation, respectively. This research raises awareness on the emerging perspectives on PV investment risk decisions and success criteria in Ghana. Considerations for potential investment opportunities and the stage of PV installations are expounded. It brings to light the geographical spread of installation that will aid critical policy decisions. Findings would be invaluable in making profound changes in the state’s policy formulation around PV. The study provides a sound basis for further research, to be directed towards complementing this work by focusing on the social impacts and further engagement of end-users with solar PV.

Re-examining the Benefits of Decentralization for Infrastructure Delivery at the Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana

Decentralization has been promoted to reflect citizens’ preferences and to improve local services. Hence, the strong demand for decentralization across the globe particularly in developing countries. This paper aimed at re-examining the benefits of decentralization for infrastructure delivery at the MMDAs in Ghana. Quantitative research approach was adopted for the study. A questionnaire survey was conducted to solicit construction professionals’ opinions on the benefits of decentralization to the MMDAs. A total of 121 professionals from 36 MMDAs in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions of Ghana participated in the survey. Mean score ranking and Factor analysis were the statistical tools employed for the analysis of the data collected. The findings of the study indicated five categories of the benefits of decentralization including: Decentralized/Democratic governance; Equal distribution of infrastructure; Improved Local capacity; Improved Financial capacity; and Improved Local development. Furthermore, the top four significant benefits accruing from decentralization as agreed upon by the respondents were: Enhanced democratic governance; Improved internally generated funds; Utilization of local materials and Improved and faster infrastructure delivery. The findings of this study provide a wider and improved understanding of the benefits of decentralization particularly to the MMDAs, which in turn would enhance their delivery of infrastructure. Therefore, effective measures should be put in place in order to drive the implementation of decentralization in Ghana. Also, proper decentralized governance systems need to be established to improve the capacity of the MMDAs to deliver infrastructure.

Rethinking three decades of decentralisation in Ghana’s local government administration under the Fourth Republic

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the successes and challenges facing Ghana’s decentralisation programme. Within the thirty years of the implementation of decentralisation in Ghana, there have been some major changes, successes, and challenges that are worth investigating to determine whether successive governments in the Fourth Republic have made significant progress in the three decades or whether there is a need to do more to strengthen the country’s decentralisation programme. The study examined different decentralisation literature to assess the performance of the country’s decentralisation programme. The methodology used is based on the qualitative approach and the descriptive method. Our findings show that regardless of the in-roads made since in the thirty years Ghana’s decentralisation programme, a myriad of challenges make its implementation complex, and its full potential impact on citizens and the local communities not realized. The significance of the study is that the outlined challenges and recommendations will inform national policy makers and the local government administrators to take Ghana’s decentralisation reforms a step further towards realizing the ultimate goals of the programme. This study further contributes toward academic discussions on decentraliaation in Ghana and Africa in general.

Challenges to decentralisation in Ghana: where do citizens seek assistance?

ABSTRACTDecentralisation in Ghana, and across sub-Saharan Africa, faces a number of challenges to successful local governance provision because there are a number of formal and informal actors to choose from. Citizens may take problems they want a governance provider to solve to a member of parliament or a district assembly person, a traditional chief or a police officer, a neighbour or an NGO. In this article we report on a four-constituency survey administered to explore and understand how citizens choose between the options of local institutions available to them in order to solve a problem important to their community or themselves. We find that formal national (Parliamentarians) and informal traditional (Chiefs) institutions are where respondents turn for assistance most often instead of constitutionally described local modes of governance (District Assemblies). We consider the implications of this finding in terms of decentralisation in Ghana and the need to build institutions that are context-sensitive and reflect how citizens understand political options.

Constitutional economics of Ghana’s decentralization

Abstract This paper concerns the rules that are often chosen to frame decentralization in Ghana. It perceives the challenges of multi-level governance in postcolonial sub-Saharan African countries, such as weak local government capacity for urban planning, as effects of ill-conceived constitutional rules. The paper draws ideas from constitutional political economy (CPE) to problematize the constitutional rules underlying Ghana’s current state of decentralization. I argue that these constitutional rules, embodied in Ghana’s 1992 Constitution and Local Government Act (462), evince both continued dominance of state control over local governance and a systemic transfer of the logics and instruments of the authoritarian Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) military regime to the choice of constitutional rules for Ghana’s decentralization. In other words, Ghana’s decentralization patterns and processes must be examined in the context of the constitutional regime from which they were born. One such pattern is the creation of new local governments (a gerrymandering strategy) by successive governments without commensurate improvement in local democratic and pro-poor developmental outcomes. The paper’s discussions, largely conceptual but interlaced with empirical moments, serve to stimulate debate about the relationships between the constitutional rules for decentralization and their socioeconomic and political effects. I conclude by reflecting on the conceptual and methodological challenges of using CPE to analyze constitutional rules for decentralization and offer ideas to address these challenges in future research.

Reducing poverty through fiscal decentralization in Ghana and beyond: A review

The unfinished agenda in the theory and practice of fiscal decentralization is how fiscal decentralization affects the universal plague of poverty reduction in developing economies. Focusing on dev...

Pro-Poor Decentralization in Ghana: Exploring the Facilitators and the Limitations

While significant research exists on why decentralization should result in poverty reduction, how this actually happens and the limitations have received little empirical research attention. Such empirical evidence is important due to the widespread adoption of decentralization in many developing and transition countries, and the consequent expectation that decentralization should be pro-poor. With empirical evidence from ten selected districts in Ghana, this article provides fresh insights into the facilitators and the limitations of pro-poor decentralization. The evidence suggests that although decentralization holds many prospects for poverty reduction, there are major limitations on how this can happen. The article establishes that while participation and representation, transparency, and accountability remain important facilitating factors, the capacity of district assemblies, apathy of citizens, resource constraints, political interference, and the absence of collaborating nonstate actors, among other factors, have limited the effectiveness of decentralization in reducing poverty in Ghana. The overarching limitation is that decentralization, which is often designed largely with political goals, is expected to be pro-poor, perhaps, only as an afterthought.

Power to the People! How far has the Power Gone to the People? A Qualitative Assessment of Decentralization Practice in Ghana

Decentralization is a concept well professed by political elites in Ghana yet there has been inadequate political will to transfer actual power, authority and resources to the district assemblies. Ghana’s current decentralization was introduced in 1988 with a mesmeric mantra of ‘power to the people’, and the concept is now over two and half decades old. This paper examines the extent to which local government reform through decentralization has brought about any meaningful changed relationship between central and local governments in Ghana. This work adopts a retrospective analysis of policy documents and a critical stage review of the relevant literature on the theoretical suppositions and practical experience of decentralization practice. The appointment of assembly heads in Ghana makes the relationship a principal-agent typology. Decentralization is at best a theoretical ramification but its actual practice has been just minimal. The study provides a ‘walk-the-talk’ model that requires political will to address the key challenges of decentralization in Ghana.

The Politics of Decentralization in Ghana’s Fourth Republic

Abstract:This article assesses how the District Assemblies in Ghana’s Fourth Republic have exercised political, administrative, and fiscal powers transferred to them by the central government. It notes that the creation of the assemblies has promoted popular participation and boosted the autonomy of front-line officials in terms of decision-making and the allocation of financial resources at the local level. However, the central government retains the authority to appoint the District Chief Executive and 30 percent of the assembly members. Local governments experience delays in the transfer of funds, an inability to absorb civil servants of decentralized departments into the local culture, and a lack of capacity to raise revenue for development. The article argues that local election of the District Chief Executive and increased allocation of funds to the rural districts would attract entrepreneurs and skilled civil servants who would be able to implement effective decentralization.

Real Innovation or Second-Best Solution? First Experiences from Results-Based Aid for Fiscal Decentralisation in Ghana and Tanzania

This paper systematically records first experiences with results-based aid for fiscal decentralisation in Ghana and Tanzania. Results-based aid is an innovative aid modality that links funding to the achievement of pre-agreed results, based on a contract between the donor and the recipient country. Observations from Ghana and Tanzania show that the modality holds great potential in incentivising better performance in fiscal decentralisation compared to traditional aid approaches. Yet, a number of challenges emerge during implementation, including trade-offs between country ownership and results-orientation or increased transaction costs, for instance. Therefore, results-based aid is a promising aid modality for fiscal decentralisation, but it should be implemented in alignment with partner-country systems and harmonised with other aid modalities. Results-based aid can be one important element of the aid modality-mix in fiscal decentralisation.

The Politics of Fiscal Decentralization in Ghana: An Overview of the Fundamentals

Fiscal decentralization has gained support by most of the world’s leading development organizations including the World Bank, United States Agency for International Development and, Asian Development Bank among others in the last two to three decades. It is therefore of much importance that some form of thought is given to the operations of this system to make it more beneficial. Drawing selectively on large academic and practical literature on fiscal decentralization and the articles in this volume, this article outlines the state of fiscal decentralization in current times. It then goes on to outline some key arguments in favor of and against fiscal decentralization as a system of government. The theoretical framework of fiscal decentralization is also discussed in this article with regards to the stabilization, distribution and allocation functions. An overview of this system of government so far as Ghana is concerned has also been touched on with much emphasis on the legal framework and the key sources of finance for subnational governments. Finally, a number of factors for improving and making this system more beneficial and sustainable over time are identified.

Democratic Decentralization in Ghana: The Need for a Policy Review

This article examines the effectiveness of Ghana’s democratic decentralization policy since its inception in the 1980s. It argues that, in spite of the lofty goals of the policy, its effectiveness has been undermined by the lack of political commitment on the part of central government and its frequent interferences in the functioning of the district assemblies, which provide the framework for the policy. The article concludes that, so far, the policy is more of a process than of substance and recommends some measures that must be taken in any serious review process. This research was carried out largely through interviews, participant observation, newspaper and article reviews and library research in and outside Ghana.

Ambiguities of Forest Management Decentralization in Ghana

Abstract This article examines the outcomes of forest management decentralization in Ghana. It has been demonstrated that despite claims that Ghana has adopted forest management decentralization policy, actual forest management powers and rights over forest resources are still retained by the central government. The government is only interested in using the decentralization policy to reduce expenditure and extend its control over forest resources. Nevertheless, it has employed policy ambiguities to hide its true intentions from international donors. In order to contain international donor demands for equity in the distribution of natural resource revenue, a small stream of forest revenue is paid to a few unelected traditional rulers and district assembly officials, who are actually within the executive's patronage networks. In the absence of any meaningful reward system and secure rights over forest resources, community forestry committees are not functioning properly.

Barriers to implementing health sector administrative decentralisation in Ghana

This paper aims to examine empirically the ways in which workforce knowledge and organisational factors of an implementing agency affected the implementation of health sector administration decentralisation in Ghana with insights from the Nkwanta district health administration. This is a qualitative study using data from individual and group interviews through purposive selection of health officials, who were directly involved in the work of actual implementation of the programme. Specifically, participants included senior management, middle management and junior workers, who had worked at least for the past three months in the district. The study found that most of the interviewees involved in the implementation process are knowledgeable of the objectives of the decentralisation process. Also, major factors that are militating against effective decentralisation in the district include inadequate funds, lack of qualified personnel, inadequate logistics and equipment, poor interpersonal relationships, lack of transparency and a good operational system, lack of incentives to motivate the staff, political interference, poor infrastructure and high rate of illiteracy. The findings of this study will help improve the implementation of decentralisation within the health sector in Ghana. The paper provides recommendations, which, if considered for implementation, will help improve the decentralisation process.

Public administration: Local government and decentralization in Ghana

Public administration as an art is defined in the Ghanaian context regarding decentralization and public officials’ accountability. It examines decentralization, local elections and empowerment. While the paper advocates for regional and district level elections, it uses the literature to argue that local representatives are more accessible to their locals. It questions the current appointment practices by the central government, which has become more partisan than originally intended in the Local Government Act. To affirm the democratic environment of politics in Ghana, it calls for constitutional amendment regarding decentralization and local government elections. Key words: Public administration, decentralization, public officials, accountability, local government elections.

The Implementation and Impact of Curriculum Decentralization in Ghana’s Junior High Schools

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Implementation and Impact of Curriculum Decentralization in Ghana’s Junior High SchoolsGeorge OseiGeorge Osei Search for more articles by this author Corrections to this articleNotice of RetractionPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 54, Number 2May 2010 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/651705 Views: 55Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref © 2010 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:James Underwood, Thanh Truong Conceptualising Teachers’ Knowledge when Crossing National Boundaries, Polish Journal of Educational Studies 72, no.11 (Apr 2020): 145–161.https://doi.org/10.2478/poljes-2019-0010Tony Bush, Derek Glover School Leadership in West Africa: Findings from a Systematic Literature Review, Africa Education Review 13, no.3-43-4 (Dec 2016): 80–103.https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2016.1229572Nuzzly Ruiz de Forsberg, Alícia Borges Månsson Implementation of Local Curriculum in Mozambican Primary Schools, (Jan 2013): 207–223.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-218-1_12Related articlesNotice of Retraction17 Jul 2015Comparative Education Review

Internal boundaries and district administration: a challenge to decentralization and district development in ghana

.Traditional institutions in Africa and their role in a decentralized administrative framework has been the subject of analysis in recent times. However, these discussions have centred largely on political power and local control of resources, to the neglect of the challenges of local government boundary setting and its consequences for local development. Therefore, in countries implementing decentralization with existing strong chiefdoms and traditional areas of jurisdictions, such as Ghana, little consideration has been given to the effects of local government boundaries on community cohesiveness and local development. This article examines the challenges of decentralization in Ghana with particular focus on district administrative boundaries. It argues that the non‐coincidence of the ‘traditional’ ethnic boundaries, namely Traditional Areas, and the ‘formal’ district administrative boundaries of some districts as well as the absence of an integrative system of traditional and modern governance present a challenge to local and district development under the present decentralization process. The article concludes that district boundary setting should be a process of ‘negotiated contract’ between the state and communities of which the boundary is meant to create a local government territorial area of jurisdiction. This process entails that the criteria for boundary setting take into account both cultural and economic factors.

‘Making democracy a reality’? The politics of decentralisation and the limits to local democracy in Ghana

Through a case study of Ghana, this article focuses on the relationship between decentralisation and local democracy. The Ghanaian constitution emphasises decentralisation as the key means to ‘making democracy a reality’, reflecting the view common amongst international development agencies that decentralisation enhances local democracy and leads to more responsive government. This article questions such views and investigates whether decentralisation in Ghana has led to increased political participation at the local level and to downwardly accountable local government. Empirical findings are two-fold. On the one hand, relatively high levels of participation in local democratic processes are indicated. On the other, accountability mechanisms have not been strengthened, with a number of limitations and shortcomings identified at local level that undermine citizens’ attempts to hold local government and their elected representatives to account. Yet, in seeking to explain this delinkage between participation and accountability, such local issues do not provide a full explanation. Attention is thus refocused on the national context, where structural obstacles to devolved government are identified in the form of legal, political, administrative and fiscal constraints. Such obstacles are not easily overcome, however, due to the politics of decentralisation, notably central government's reluctance to relinquish control over its powers. Recent proposals for reform in Ghana's decentralisation system are considered, but political change is unlikely given the built-in advantages to the ruling party, whichever is in power. Without such reforms, though, local democracy is likely to remain more appearance than reality.

Policy networks, politics and decentralisation policies in Ghana

AbstractPolicy‐making is a political process involving a network of actors with varied interests. This article uses policy network as an analytical framework to understand the politics of decentralisation policy‐making in Ghana from the perspective of interactions among interest groups. The article is based on a research study, which utilised semi‐structured interviews and documentary sources in its data collection. It argues that the lack of progress in decentralisation in Ghana can be explained by the politics surrounding government–interest group relations. The article also provides evidence to indicate how varied interests represented within the decentralisation policy networks affected politics and in turn influenced decentralisation policy‐making and outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.