This Local Integrity System (LIS) Assessment is one of five pilots undertaken by Transparency International (TI) national chapters from Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East to test the relevance and applicability of the LIS Assessment approach in different national and local contexts. The pilots took place between September and December 2013. In Kenya, the assesment was conducted in Kwale and Kisumu Counties between September and December 2013.

Public participation as a democratic right has gained wide acceptance in local governance, both to improve accountability in service delivery and to enhance civic consciousness. Uganda now has two decades’ experience of various forms of decentralisation. However, the extent of public participation both in local planning and in holding local politicians to account has been inconsistent. Taking Buikwe District local government as a case study, the authors argued that three key factors influence public participation in local governance – access to information, ability to use information effectively, and awareness of citizens’ rights, roles and responsibilities. They found that these factors positively influenced overall respondents’ participation in local government projects by 10.2%, 19% and 22% respectively based on Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The study further found that information is not readily accessible or effectively disseminated to the majority of citizens and therefore is not fully harnessed for planning, monitoring and evaluating government projects. Reasons for this inadequate access included: limited and costly infrastructure for handling information: lack of skills in relation to how and when to use information; and lack of analytical and simplification skills among those disseminating information. In light of these findings, the paper recommends that information dissemination must be planned and carried out in a targeted and systematic way, if citizens’ awareness of their rights, roles and responsibilities in service delivery is to be achieved.

Uganda’s Government of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) assumed power in 1986, in an environment of political turmoil, and initiated a policy of decentralisation as a way of restoring state credibility and deepening democracy. Decentralisation was accordingly legislated under the Local Government Act of 1997, as a framework act directing the decentralisation process. The aim of the Act was to enable implementation of decentralisation provisions provided for under Chapter 11 of the 1995 National Constitution. The decentralisation policy in Uganda aimed at improving local democracy, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability in the delivery of essential services country-wide. Improved service delivery was in turn expected to make significant positive impact on people’s quality of life. Unfortunately, the implementation of decentralisation appears to have concentrated more on administrative objectives as a means of promoting popular democracy and less on service delivery which would have led to economic transformation and better lives for the majority of Ugandans, and now new districts are being created without corresponding improvements in service delivery. Surprisingly, this is happening in the midst of external praise that decentralisation reform in Uganda is one of the most far-reaching local government reform programmes in the developing world. The paper explores the role of decentralisation in development and how it can be undermined by political factors. It highlights the development of decentralisation in Uganda, discusses its achievements, failure and challenges, and concludes that the decentralisation programme which was ambitious and politically driven has had mixed results in terms of enhancing service delivery and should be seriously reviewed and strengthened if it is to remain as a role model in Africa.

The rationale for local fiscal autonomy suggests that local expenditure and local revenue generation should remain in close proximity. This is achieved through fiscal decentralisation to local government, to ensure efficient provision of local services that align with local needs, and to improve accountability to residents. Fiscal decentralisation has found resonance in developing countries through local government reforms, but in Africa fiscal decentralisation has been focussed mainly on revenue sharing, except in a few cases where some local fiscal autonomy has been achieved. Urbanisation in Africa is likely to continue (UN-Habitat, 2008), necessitating an increase in municipal service delivery which African cities must finance - hence the need for local fiscal autonomy. Local fiscal autonomy is arguably contentious for African cities, partly because provision of municipal services must be tempered with considerations of equity and redistribution to the poorer urban populations, and because inadequate welfare nets from national government do not subsidise the gap in municipal revenue. In the recent past, Kenya and South Africa adopted local government reforms in different forms that has yielded different forms of local fiscal autonomy. The paper conducts a comparative of local fiscal autonomy in municipal services provision in Nairobi and Johannesburg.