Loopholes in the Decentralization of City Administration: Case of Oromia Regional state-Adama City

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the loopholes in the decentralization of Adama city administration sector offices in the Oromia regional state of Ethiopia. The decentralization implementation at the revenue, housing, social service and Micro and Small Enterprise Development Agency (MSEDA) sectors were evaluated. The study has focused on resource allocation, workload distribution and performance measurement aspects of the decentralization process. The result indicated that the decentralization design overlooked the specific needs and features of each sector in resource allocation, workload distribution and performance measurement. The resource allocation process lacks flexibility to address the specific needs of each sector. The workload variation is significant in three sectors (revenue, housing and MSEDA) at kebele[1] level, and associated resource need level is similarly overlooked. The performance of kebeles is measured based on factors beyond the control of sector offices at each sector both at planning and implementation phase. Moreover, the performance evaluation of sectors is not associated with the main objective of the decentralization itself which is speed of service delivery.

[1] Equivalent to neighborhood district and named by number in cities in Ethiopia: ,kebele 1, ,2,3,4 etc. Adama city have 14 urban kebeles