Toward an Accountable Budget Process in Sub-Saharan Africa: Problems and Prospects

Of the many factors contributing to the relative under-development across sub-Saharan Africa over the past five decades, one cause that is currently gaining more attention from both scholars and development practitioners is the lack of a transparent and accountable national budget process in most African countries. Although most African constitutions provide for a number of mechanisms of accountability within the budget process that are tasked with monitoring and sanctioning the misuse of public funds by the executive, various legal, capacity and political constraints greatly hinder these mechanisms from playing an effective oversight role. This article examines the various challenges faced by four key mechanisms of accountability-parliamentary budget committees, supreme audit institutions, citizen budget monitoring and advocacy groups and elections-in holding leaders to account through the various stages of the budget process. However, despite these challenges, the article concludes by examining some recent progress and successes in the budget accountability arena.