LAFIAS: Local Authorities Financial and Institutional Management System
Local governments throughout the world encounter many difficulties in their efforts to support satisfying responses to the legitimate expectations of underprivileged communities for basic public services. Some of the fundamental difficulties are issues of local finances, communal management and local economic development. Despite various kinds of support to territorial communities in the subregion and the studies, approaches and testing conducted in mobilizing resources of local authorities, it is clear that these actions have a low impact on the rural authorities, which are numerous and which must find the means for basic public services. The context of decentralization and taxation in West Africa is characterized by a great majority of rural territorial authorities (more than 87 per cent in Guinea, 85 per cent in Mali, 84 per cent in Burkina Faso and 82 per cent in Senegal) exercising their local responsibilities very poorly due to lack of adequate human and financial resources. The authorities’ own resources are extremely limited due to weaknesses of the tax base and the tax yield, on the one hand, and irregularity of transferred resources, on the other. Within this situation, and in order to strengthen self-management capacities of the rural communes and to improve the economic and social situation of local populations concerned, the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has developed a pilot scheme in three countries, Guinea, Mali and Benin. The pilot system is known as LAFIAS – Local Authorities Financial and Institutional Analysis System. LAFIAS is a concerted approach that aims, through analytical tools, to grasp the problems linked to local management and governance, in particular, the organizational operations of the authorities, their financing and the economic dimension of their development. It relies on diagnostics (organizational, financial and economic), public consultations and action plans derived from ways of thinking identified with actors concerned. This publication provides a comprehensive overview of the LAFIAS approach, and introduces the tools and techniques used.
L A F IAS Local Authorities Financial and Institutional Management System A support tool for decision making
United Nations Capital Development Fund Two UN Plaza, 26th Floor New York, NY USA 10017 web : http://www.uncdf.org email : info@uncdf.org
October 2007
United Nations Capital Development Fund