C o n t e x t — c h a l l e n g e s a n d o p p o r t u n i t i e s
In the early 1990s, Benin was one of the first countries to respond to the democratic wave that swept across Africa. Decentralisation featured prominently on the agenda. Reflecting the political nature of such reforms, it took almost a decade before an appropriate legal and institutional framework was put in place. The first local elections of 2002 heralded the effective start of the decentralisation process. In 2009, an ambitious policy framework for territorial development and administrative
reform was formulated — Politique natio-nale de décentralisation et de déconcen-tration (PONADEC). The policy emphasises the need to (i) break with the tradition of centralised, vertical approaches to sec-tor policies; (ii) promote effective forms of participatory local governance; and (iii) use contractual arrangements between the state and local authorities (LAs) to foster local development.
Benin is a young democracy, still confronted with major governance challenges — includ-ing corruption — and institutional weak-nesses, particularly at the sub-national level(1). Not surprisingly, the success of the decentralisation process has been mixed.
With long-standing support from several donors, particularly the European Union (EU), successive governments have put in place a relatively coherent legal, policy and institutional framework. This includes a national mechanism, the Fonds d’appui au
développement des communes (FADeC), which provides financial support to the communes in planning and carrying out investments at the local level.
(1) Two sub-national levels exist in Benin: (i) a deconcentrated level consisting of 12 departments grouped under 6 préfectures (representing the state at the local level) and (ii) a single level of decentralisation comprising 77 elected communes with three sets of competences (own, shared and delegated).
T H E C A S E I N A N U T S H E L L
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ollowing a long gestation period, implementation of decentralisation started in Benin in 2002–2003. Over time, substantial progress has been made in refining the policy framework, building commune capacity, promoting citizen participation, and providing public goods and services to local populations. In 2009, the government sought to deepen the decentralisation process with a comprehensive territorial development policy. However, implementation has lagged as communes lack autonomy and central structures resist change.The European Union has been supporting decentralisation reform from the outset via the 8th European Development Fund (EDF) through an evolving set of programmes and aid modalities. Under the 11th EDF, the European Union seeks to put decentralisation at the service of genuine territorial development. This will be accomplished through a balanced mix of budget support (to help the central government implement its national policy) and complementary measures (to provide institutional support and facilitate policy experimentation regarding territorial development).
The broader PONADEC agenda of territorial development as a bottom-up process driven by local actors based on additional resource mobilisation has not made significant advances.
This is primarily due to the lack of a shared vision and ownership of the territorial develop-ment policy. It has resulted in an intergoverndevelop-mental system characterised by limited oppor-tunities for dialogue and an unclear division of tasks among the various actors. The man-dates of central institutions supporting decentralisation are not oriented to foster territorial development. Other major institutional bottlenecks include the lack of tested contractual arrangements between the state and LAs, weak inter-municipal associations, and a lack of expertise in operationalising a territorial approach to local development. While FADeC has enabled a constant flow of resources to the local level, the limited degree of sectoral decon-centration reduces the effectiveness of the funds allocated. Furthermore, the communes are not yet in a position to mobilise their own resources with a view to stimulating genuine local development from the bottom up.
Despite this sobering track record, windows of opportunity exist to promote territorial devel-opment. Additionally, there is a growing political and societal recognition that the territory should be at the centre of efforts to address pervasive poverty and developmental, demo-graphic and urbanisation challenges. This recognition implies a process of empowering the local public sector through a bottom-up process, progressively allowing the various actors (LAs, deconcentrated services, front-line service providers) to assume a catalytic role in local development.
A c t i o n s t a k e n
Building on its long-standing engagement in the decentralisation process, the EU has decided to put territorial development at the centre of its response strategy for the 11th European Development Fund (EDF). An amount of EUR 70 million has been reserved for the Programme d’appui au développement territorial (PADT). In order to stimulate locally led, inclusive and sustainable territorial development, three key results will be pursued: (i) effective steering of the territorial administrative reform process and sectoral deconcentration, (ii) empower-ment of both communes and citizens for inclusive local governance and (iii) better planning and implementation of territorial development through balanced contractual arrangements between the state and LAs.
Two factors explain the EU policy shift towards territorial development. First, the new PADT is the logical continuation of earlier EU support strategies. Notably, the EU provided criti-cal support to the nascent communes through the Programme d’appui au démarrage des communes (PRODECOM) from 2003–2006 (8th EDF). The EU then moved into more sophis-ticated support focusing on enhancing the maîtrise d’ouvrage of LAs (PACTE, 2007–2011, 9th EDF) and the promotion of local development (PADL, 2012–2016, 10th EDF). Under the 10th EDF, the budget support component became dominant (EUR 45 million as compared to EUR 3.8 million for complementary measures), partly to ensure sufficient funding for FADeC.
The currently envisaged PADT embraces the wider goal of territorial development with an adapted set of aid modalities.
Second, the evolution in the EU delegation’s support coincided with new thinking at the EU level on the instrumental role of decentralisation, as encapsulated by the 2013 communica-tion on LAs (EC, 2013). This makes Benin an interesting laboratory to test decentralisacommunica-tion at the service of territorial development. It is a perilous move — the action document identifies no fewer than seven risks — but has real potential to produce better governance and devel-opment outcomes over time.
L e s s o n s l e a r n t
■ Accompanying domestic change processes through evolving response strategies.
It is difficult to explain the decentralisation process in Benin without looking at the critical role played by the successive EU support programmes. From the outset, the EU has acted as a strategic partner and change agent, tailoring its support to the political dynamics and evolving needs of the reform. PRODECOM was catalytic in laying the foundations for the effective emergence of communes. The EU could then focus on consolidating decentrali-sation as a state reform process and on improving local development outcomes through FADeC. PADT demonstrates the EU’s recognition that the decentralisation process is ‘run-ning out of steam’ and that a focus on territorial development might give it a new drive and legitimacy.
■ Providing the right incentives to reform. Both PRODECOM and PACTE primarily focused on bringing decentralisation to life by investing in the new communes. The incentives were therefore geared at building LA capacity, making a project approach appropriate for PRODECOM, while PACTE used a mix of aid modalities with a small budget support component to test out FADeC. When the time was ripe to consolidate the decentralisation process, the incentives shifted to the central government (PADL) with substantial budget support. The aim was to build trust amongst others by equating the fixed and variable tranches and by defining feasible performance indicators. In PADT, the variable tranches gain importance, reflecting a willingness on the part of the EU to progressively disengage (e.g. in the level of contributions to FADeC) while incentivising the government to perform and facilitate mobilisation of their own resources by the communes.
■ Distinguishing between support to policy implementation and to policy experi-mentation. In the PADT, a rebalancing can be observed between the parts reserved for budget support and complementary measures. It reflects a recognition that in decentral-isation reforms it is crucial to distinguish between (i) support for implementing national policy, primarily through the action of central governments (hence justifying budget sup-port); and (ii) support for experimenting and developing mechanisms, processes and tools to make a territorial approach to local development a practical reality by testing things on the spot (therefore requiring more flexible project support).
■ Involving all relevant actors. Over time, EU support has embraced a wider set of policy stakeholders. Thus, under the 11th EDF, a direct grant is foreseen to the Beninese Association of LAs to fully participate in the promotion of territorial development. To pre-pare the association for this task, the CSO-LA Thematic Programme has been mobilised, in a complementary manner, through a partnership with the Association of Francophone Mayors.