Achieving Better Service Delivery Through Decentralization in Ethiopia

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Cover

Title

WORLD BANK WORKING PAPER NO. 131

Achieving Better Service Delivery

Through Decentralization

in Ethiopia

Marito Garcia

Andrew Sunil Rajkumar

Africa Region Human Development Department

Copyright

Copyright © 2008

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank

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Manufactured in the United States of America

First Printing: January 2008

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ISBN-13: 978-0-8213-7382-8

eISBN: 978-0-8213-7383-5

ISSN: 1726-5878                           DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-7382-8

Marito Garcia is a Lead Economist in the Africa Region Human Development Department of the World Bank. Andrew Sunil Rajkumar is an Economist in the same department.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested

Contents

Contents

Appendixes

List of Tables

List of Figures

List of Boxes

Foreword

Foreword

Over the last 10 years, several African countries have made notable progress in meeting the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). Among them is Ethiopia where in 2005 nearly 75 percent of children enrolled in primary schools, a result of an impressive 9 percent annual growth in enrollment since 1993. Other indicators also registered improvements: immunization coverage for measles rose to 57 percent in 2005 from 40 percent in 1995. The percentage of Ethiopians with access to clean water rose from 19 percent in 1995 to 36 percent in 2005.

These improvements happened at a time of massive decentralization in Ethiopia—first from the federal to region, and subsequently into woredas (districts). This work presents an account of how decentralization has supported the delivery of basic services, including education and health to woredas. Because the authors were able to piece together detailed fiscal data from federal, region and woreda levels, as well as education and health data before and after the decentralization, the results provided insights into what has gone into the decisionmaking processes that contributed to the outcomes particularly in the education sector. It provides a glimpse of how the fiscal and administrative autonomy responds to the needs of their constituencies to improve service delivery.

This work provides evidence to the observation that the devolution of power and resources from the federal and regional governments to the woredas contributed to improvements in the delivery of basic services particularly in education. The independent surveys of beneficiaries by NGO groups in Ethiopia, perceive the service coverage and quality to have improved, especially in education. One of the most important results provided by the authors is that the decentralization has disproportionately favored the more remote woredas, the food insecure and pastoral woredas. This is a very important finding from a strategic standpoint because it indicates that decentralization itself is pro-poor, and helps those lagging areas in the country. The aggregate woreda spending for education for pastoral woredas increased dramatically with decentralization, faster than other woredas. Education budgets in food insecure woredas rose much higher than in food secure woredas, and narrowing the gap in educational outcomes.

Surely decentralization is only one among many other factors that contributed to the improvement in service delivery in Ethiopia. This work has also documented the changes in sectoral policies, for example the policy of using local languages at the lower primary level which improved school participation. Likewise, the growing role of communities, parent-teachers’ associations (PTAs), and other local organizations, may have also contributed to better service delivery.

In preparing this volume the authors worked extensively with national experts and scholars not only from the capital city but also with regional specialists. This provided ample opportunities for both learning and capacity building for analytical work in this area, to understand the impact of decentralized service delivery on the population. Such capacity will no doubt support future work to help finely tune the decentralization processes, and improve the ability to find solutions to improve service delivery in a decentralized system.

Yaw Ansu

Director, Human Development Department

Africa Region

The World Bank

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

This book expands on a report prepared for the World Bank Africa Region’s Human Development Department under the general guidance of Laura Frigenti (Sector Manager, AFTH3), Ishac Diwan (Country Director, AFC06), Yaw Ansu (Sector Director, AFTHD) and Trina Haque