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The status of public expenditure and services delivery in Africa: People’s perceptions from the African governance report
9 October 2006
Mzwanele G. Mfunwa
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
This paper summarizes UNECA’s research findings on ordinary people’s views about governments’ performance in delivering public services. Against dismal
initial conditions, average perceptions among households indicate that Africa is moving in the right direction.
However, there exists a deep cleavage between expectations arising from African’s democratization and ‘peace dividend,’ and the state of public service delivery. At the local government level where delivery takes place, on average, 36% of household respondents say the amount of services delivered is good, 38% fair and 24% poor. These averages hide significant and systematic country variations however. For example, in Burkina Faso 62% of the
household respondents considered the quality of public services to be very good or good; in Tanzania 46% of the respondents considered it to be fair; and in Cameroon 41% of the respondents considered it to be very poor or poor.
On various social sectors, people’s perceptions are mostly positive at primary levels with over 40% of the households viewing government health services as good and accessible. Relative satisfaction abounds on the education front too, with 50% or more households being satisfied with buildings and teachers, but these perceptions become less sanguine about teaching materials (37%). Views on access to clean water and sanitation shows guarded optimism, supported by the UNICEF findings that, for example, still 40% of the rural population in Djibouti and Morocco has no access to proper drinking water. As expected, a large number of households hold a dim view of governments’ efforts in delivering employment (68%) and housing (47.1%). Similar negative views are expressed on economic services with most respondents saying they lacked access to agricultural extension services (51%), no agricultural credit (61%) and no access to irrigation facilities (57%). Only 7% of households expressed satisfaction with the transport system in their countries and a dismal 4% say they are happy with the provision of roads.
Keywords: public expenditure
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