Economic Analysis of Decentralisation in Rural Ghana

Many countries around the world have been attempting – for several reasons and with various degrees of intention and success – to create or strengthen local governments in recent years. Ghana is one of these countries and since 1998 has been going through a decentralisation process, that is moving decision-making from the national (center) to the district and community levels – a bottom up approach.
Many rationales for decentralisation may be discerned in the literature and in practice. The most common theoretical rationales for decentralisation are : to attain allocative efficiency in the face of different local preferences for public goods and services and equity and distributional concerns – poverty reduction. In this context, this study performs an economic analysis of decentralisation in rural Ghana specifically addressing the following issues : has the decentralisation helped in the delivery of public goods and services and to what extent has the access to public goods and services helped to reduce poverty ? Education, health and water were the public goods and services studied.
Quantitative and qualitative techniques are used to address theses issues.