A cautious dawn for Congolese decentralisation
The polished conference room of Brazzaville’s Radisson Blu did not betray the anxiety that shadows Congo’s decade-old promise of decentralisation. On 26 June the Ministry of the Interior and Decentralisation, flanked by the World Bank, assembled forty municipal treasurers, provincial finance directors and civil-society observers for what officials called a “special clinic” on domestic revenue mobilisation. The gathering follows the Bank’s 2022 diagnostic, Progress and Priorities in Decentralisation in Congo (World Bank, 2022), which concluded that despite constitutional guarantees local governments capture barely five per cent of national revenue and remain hostage to erratic transfers from the hydrocarbon-fed central budget.
Why the coffers stay thin
Brazzaville’s municipal budget illustrates the pathology. In 2023 the city booked 38 billion CFA francs in planned own-source revenue but collected only 17 billion, according to the Ministry of Finance. Property tax rolls are outdated, market fees are siphoned off before reaching the treasury, and digital payment platforms cover only two of the capital’s nine arrondissements. A similar pattern plagues Pointe-Noire, where port levies are negotiated ad hoc with state-owned operators, leaving mayors at the mercy of political patrons in the presidency.
At the structural level, the 2018 Organic Law on the Regime of the State’s Finances applied central-government accounting norms to local authorities but offered no enforcement mechanism for the cardinal separation between authorising officer and public accountant. The resulting duality—political appointees approving invoices that technocrats must later justify—continues to blur accountability, an issue underscored by Transparency International’s 2023 report ranking Congo 166th of 180 countries.
World Bank pedagogy and the search for quick wins
The June workshop, led by fiscal federalism specialist Ana Paula de la Cruz, sought to convert theory into checklists: mapping untapped tax bases, auditing fee exemptions, and introducing single-window payment desks in markets and bus stations. According to de la Cruz, the aim is to raise own-source revenue in Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire by 35 per cent within three fiscal years, a target she described as “ambitious yet feasible if leakages are plugged at their political source”.
Participants drafted a reform roadmap that pairs short-term actions—such as geolocating commercial properties—with medium-term objectives, notably the adoption of an intergovernmental transfer formula that rewards performance. The Bank has promised a USD 50 million Performance for Results credit, contingent on parliament passing amendments to the Local Government Code that clarify borrowing limits and sanction non-compliance (IMF Article IV Consultation, 2024).
The central–local bargain: political sensitivities laid bare
Behind the technical vocabulary lurks a delicate political equilibrium. President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s entourage worries that fully empowered communes might cultivate opposition fiefdoms, particularly in urban districts where living costs outpace public services. Conversely, mayors argue that without predictable transfers they cannot shoulder the social expectations amplified by rapid urbanisation—the urban population has risen from 58 per cent in 2000 to 68 per cent in 2023 (UN-Habitat, 2023).
Veteran constitutional lawyer Florent Tchibota notes that Congolese decentralisation has always oscillated between symbolic devolution and recentralising reflexes triggered by fiscal stress. In his words, “the purse remains the ultimate leash”. The collapse in Brent prices in 2020 provoked a 22 per cent fall in national revenue, and transfers to communes were among the first budget lines frozen. Local leaders now view diversification away from oil volatility as existential rather than merely reformist.
Regional benchmarks: lessons from next-door laboratories
Observers often contrast Congo’s struggle with Cameroon’s more advanced fiscal deconcentration, where councils now retain 15 per cent of personal income tax after the 2019 decentralisation law. Ghana’s composite budget system, meanwhile, allows district assemblies to publish quarterly execution reports online, a transparency practice Congolese civil society hopes to emulate. The African Development Bank estimates that municipalities achieving at least ten per cent own-source revenue tend to record faster improvements in waste management and primary healthcare coverage (AfDB Decentralisation Index, 2023).
Yet analysts caution against over-romanticising regional peers. Cameroon’s councils still depend on the national treasury for salary top-ups, while Kenya’s 2013 county governments saw duplication of procurement scandals. The lesson for Congo is thus pragmatic: autonomy without robust oversight can magnify, not mitigate, governance deficits.
Risks on the reform horizon
Even if legislative amendments sail through parliament, two risks loom. First, capacity asymmetry: the northern Sangha department employs just three certified accountants, whereas Brazzaville commands thirty-seven. Without targeted capacity-building, a uniform reform template could widen intra-national inequalities. Second, political timetables: local elections are due in 2026, and opposition parties already frame fiscal devolution as a referendum on the ruling majority’s commitment to grassroots empowerment. Accelerated reforms could be re-interpreted as electoral manoeuvring, inviting resistance within the ruling coalition.
Toward credible fiscal contracts
Yet the window for action may never be more propitious. Congo’s debt-to-GDP ratio has fallen from 98 per cent in 2020 to 75 per cent after restructurings with Chinese creditors, easing macro-fiscal pressure. The IMF’s Resident Representative, Ivan Portes, argues that “a decentralised tax base can serve as a shock absorber at the very moment the oil era shows diminishing returns”. If the June roadmap survives the heat of bureaucratic contestation, Congo could inch closer to what the late political scientist Elinor Ostrom called a “credible fiscal contract” between citizens and state.
In the shorter term, diplomats in Brazzaville will watch three sign-posts: passage of the revised Local Government Code, the pilot roll-out of digital tax platforms in five urban markets, and the 2025 budget’s allocation keys. Each will signal whether Congo’s leaders are ready to exchange the comfort of centralised control for the messy discipline of local accountability.