In Senegal, the Forum Civil has established a citizen-led "good governance" label that rewards local authorities for giving citizens value for money. This innovative approach could prove to be decisive to decentralised Senegalese local authorities by assisting them to become more effective service providers.
Saint Louis, the oldest city in Senegal, is one of the fifteen local authorities that volunteered in the last few years to take part in the pilot phase of a citizen-led certification process of local governance.
Initiated by the Civil Forum, the Senegalese section of Transparency International, with the support of the Luxembourg Agency for Development Cooperation, the good governance certification process aims to evaluate the public services offered to citizens by local authorities, and also to build the capacities of local actors and the participation of citizens. The process should be extended to other areas of the country in 2012. A co-financing from the European Commission is envisaged in the framework of the thematic programme for "Non-state actors and local authorities in development".
The "good governance label" established by the Forum Civil uses citizens, chosen from among the members of local independent associations and representatives of devolved technical services, to measure the action by local authorities through a local good governance index. The index is based on five essential principles of good governance selected by the Civil Forum and the partner local authorities: effectiveness, transparency, participation, equity and the accountability obligation. One of the major innovations of the programme lies in experimentation at the local level of a transparent model based on capacity development of local actors and citizen participation.
"I come from a country where the good governance and corruption perceptions index has been see-sawing for a number of years. In parallel, civil society organisations have developed at local level. This has led to an increase in the demand for good governance," explained Omar Saip Sy, Director of Studies at Forum Civil."
"Since we work on issues such as access to water, education and health, we have realised that decentralisation at local level could be an extra tool to fight corruption and promote good governance,” he said.
Senegal has a long history of decentralisation initiatives that give power to regional and local authorities. Legal reforms enacted by the government in 1996 marked a decisive turning point in the country’s decentralisation process, and the Local Government Law provided the foundations for decentralised local governance.
According to Omar Saip Sy, decentralising government and governance make local authorities more effective service providers. Nevertheless, subnational governments, civil society, the media and parliaments also need to be strengthened to be able to claim increased accountability and transparency from national governments – thus promoting good governance, he concluded.
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