Urban governance in Freetown

Urban governance is how responsible institutions manage the urban environment. And in most cases, in Sierra Leone, for example, it’s the responsibility of our local councils, as per the 2004 act, Local Government Act, they have a mandate to manage the cities and towns, and the objective there is to make sure the cities or the towns function effectively with efficient service delivery to their constituents. Well, with urban governance, again, it should be based on principles of accountability and transparency, to ensure we deliver efficient services to the citizens, right. And to do that, it has to be very inclusive and participatory, meaning citizens should be able to participate and be in a position to hold their political leaders accountable.

And, of course, also the civil society organisations have also a key role to monitor the process, making sure it’s transparent. All of that will happen when we have an effective and semi-autonomous, or autonomous, local councils. But for that to happen, again, local councils should be able, should be, financially independent. In our case, almost all of our local councils depend on government subventions. Those are some subventions that tie to certain conditions, and that makes them, to a large extent, not, you know, independent.

And so it is very key that local councils have put in a good financial management system in place to be in a position to provide those services, making sure it is open, transparent, and inclusive, so that citizens will participate, and we have a public to hold them accountable.

Well, the urban governance, although the primary responsibility rests on local councils, as defined in the 2004 act, but it is a multi-level structure. That means it involves all the players, all the active players, put vertically and horizontally, meaning at the national, regional, and the local level. And you also have players at the horizontal structure. So it involves a lot of players, and it also involves not only the central and local government, but also the private sector, as well as civil society organisations. They also play a critical role in urban governance, to make sure we’re able to deliver the required services to the citizenship.