International records / OpenAlex research

A comparative analysis of local government financial autonomy in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and India

Financial autonomy is widely regarded as the single most consequential dimension of local government autonomy, because political and administrative independence at the grassroots level is of limited practical value to a local council that cannot control the resources needed to act on them.This article undertakes a comparative analysis of the constitutional and statutory mechanisms through which four jurisdictions, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and India guarantee financial autonomy to subnational and local government institutions, and evaluates the Nigerian framework against each.It finds that N…