Local Governance and Service Delivery in Sierra Leone: Challenges Faced by Bo City Council

Abstract

This work was carried out to evaluate the challenges local councils face in service delivery. Local councils play a crucial role in service delivery, ensuring that essential services reach communities, thus impacting the people’s overall well-being. Through their various functions and responsibilities, local councils ensure effective governance, efficient service provision, and community participation. This article adopts primary data through questionnaires and interviews and secondary data through consultation with several textbooks, magazines, journals, and other publications. Two hundred and fifty (250) copies of questionnaires were administered through simple random sampling method. It was observed that various challenges faced by local councils were late transfer of funds, conflict of interest between the political and administrative wing, inadequate logistics, lack of donor funded projects, tax collection from businesses, lack of autonomy, poor leadership, corruption and administrative inefficiency, were among the challenges faced by Bo City Council. However, it is recommended that the government concentrate on capacity building, adopting new technology, timely transfer of funds from the central government, and providing adequate financial support to local councils in communities and the entire country. Additionally, it is important to review and enhance collaboration between different agencies and formulate policies that enable local councils to contribute to political discussions and improve service delivery within the local governance structure.