Sierra Leone Telegraph: 5 October 2025:
When governments run out of ideas to improve the lives of its people and uplift them from poverty, they usually look for gimmicky policies that are politically easy and less risky to implement, so as to divert the attention of the electorate from what truly matters – the economy.
A good example is the Bio-led government’s proposal to break up Sierra Leone’s capital city of just two million people into multiple cities. Crass stupidity most intelligent people would agree, especially when the government has woefully failed to make an economic case for such a proposal.
Whilst it may be politically expedient for President Bio and his ruling SLPP party to redraw the electoral boundaries of Freetown so as to win the forthcoming 2028 elections, thus giving itself a third term in office, the economic and social costs of such a proposal are staggering.
For decades, Sierra Leone has been classed as one of the poorest nations in the world, with successive governments failing to create a strong and sustainable economy that provides jobs and wealth for its people.
Sierra Leone is not poor because the country’s capital Freetown is too large. Sierra Leone is poor because it lacks competent, honest and patriotic leaders that can govern for the benefit of its people.
Over 80% of the government’s spending comes from borrowing and foreign aid which is fast drying up. The country’s taxation base is not broad enough, as the number of taxpayers (both businesses and workers) is far too low, hence the government’s over reliance on the mining industry for meagre export revenue.
President Bio and his government have done absolutely nothing to improve the living standards and living conditions of the people of Sierra Leone, with hundreds of thousands of young people now turning to drugs and crime to soften the harsh realities of life.
So, what economic or administrative sense does it make to divide Freetown into multiple cities, if the government is struggling to manage one city?
With this growing debate, the Mayor of Freetown – Yvonne Aki-Sawyer said that: “ On Thursday 18th September 2025, the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs held a public consultation on the proposed plans to divide Freetown into three cities with three local councils and three mayors. The reasons for the proposed division were listed in the presentation made by the Ministry.
“Given the far reaching and long-lasting implications of this proposed action on the lives of Freetonians, and on the future of our historic city, it is imperative that the reasons proffered by the Ministry are carefully considered on the basis of empirical evidence and academic research.
“I therefore shared the Ministry’s presentation with the African Centre for Cities, an interdisciplinary hub at the University of Cape Town with a mandate to conduct meaningful research on how to understand, recast and address pressing urban crises
“Please read a commentary authored by Associate Professor Warren Smit of the African Centre for Cities. The commentary provides empirical and concrete evidence that single-tier local governments that are responsible for an entire city are more efficient and equitable than fragmented local government systems in which cities are divided between multiple local government authorities.
“Associate Professor Smit’s commentary also provides a direct response to each of the reasons for the proposed division of Freetown that is listed in the Ministry’s presentation.
“It is imperative that an issue of such importance, involving our capital city, is not politicized but is carefully considered in the best interest of Freetonians, of Freetown and of Sierra Leone.”
It is in this regard, that the African Centre for Cities based in South Africa has examined in a report published last week, the government’s case for dividing Freetown. This is what it says:
We note with concern the proposal to subdivide Freetown and create new local government areas. Single-tier local governments that are responsible for an entire city are more efficient and equitable than fragmented local government systems in which cities are divided between multiple local government authorities.
Below we discuss the advantages of citywide/single-tier local government and examine the example of the City of Cape Town. This is followed by a detailed table commenting on the points raised and
examples used in the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs’ presentation on the creation of new local government areas for Freetown.
The advantages of citywide/single-tier local government
Arguments in favour of a citywide/single-tier local government typically focus on efficiency, clarity, and more equitable resource distribution. In this model, a single authority carries out all local government functions within an entire city and its suburbs, in contrast to a fragmented local government system in which a city is split into multiple local government authorities or into multiple tiers of local government.
Key arguments supporting having only one local government authority for an entire city include:
• Improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness through avoiding duplication of costs
and through ensuring economies of scale
• Equitable resource allocation and cross-subsidization
• Enhanced economic growth
• Improved integration and coordination of services
• Stronger expertise/ specialized expertise to address complex urban challenges
• Potentially enhanced accountability and clarity
• Increase in social cohesion
Improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness through avoiding duplication of costs and through ensuring economies of scale
The most tangible benefit of having a single local government authority for a city is improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness through avoidance of duplication of costs and through economies of scale (Community Law Centre, 2007).
By eliminating the duplication of political structures and bureaucracies, costs can be saved, for example,
the cost of local government offices, the cost of senior local government officials, the cost of running new councils, etc. It removes the extra costs associated with staffing and managing another set of elected officials and administrative processes.
There are also economies of scale in providing services on a larger scale. Economies of scale exist when the average cost of producing a good or service fall when output is expanded. Economies of scale don’t necessarily apply to all local government services, but it does apply to many.
In particular, economies of scale are more likely in capital intensive services due to the associated fixed cost and in highly specialized, seldomly used services where there is room for labour specialization (Blank & Niaounakis, 2021).
In addition to economies of scale, providing services at a citywide scale also helps in terms of managing externalities. Externalities (also known as spillovers) are where the benefits or negative impacts of a specific service in one local government area spill over to residents of another local government area.
For example, a road in one local government area can provide benefits to residents of neighbouring areas who also drive on it. There can also be negative externalities. For example, if a city is subdivided into different local government authorities, one local government authority may choose to locate a facility such as a landfill site on the edge of its area, where it may have a negative impact on the residents of the adjoining local government area.
By making decisions at a citywide scale for all residents of the city, decisions like these can be made in the interests of all residents not just residents of part of the city. As a result, many functions of local government are best handled at the citywide/metropolitan scale rather than by fragmented local governments, as shown by Table 1.
Equitable resource allocation and cross-subsidization
Cities are usually unevenly developed, with clusters of economic activity and pockets of wealthier residents, and often with low-income residents concentrated in particular parts of the city. Fragmented local government can mean that there would be some local government areas with large concentrations of low-income households and low revenue bases.
By incorporating all of a city within one unified local government authority, this creates a single financial resource base. This can facilitate the redistribution of funds from commercial/industrial areas and higher-income areas to provide cross-subsidies for services in lower-income communities.
In the case of Freetown, revenue potential and collection in Freetown is not evenly distributed across the city. Of the NLe22.8m property rates collected in Freetown in 2024,
NLe4.6m or 20% was collected from the 24 wards in the east of Freetown (with a compliance rate of 34%) while NLe18.2m or 80% was collected from the 24 wards in the west of Freetown (with a compliance rate of 55%).
This shows that the eastern part of the city, which has two thirds of the city’s population, has a considerably lower revenue collection rate and a much lower revenue collected per capita. Residents living in the east of the city will therefore be directly disadvantaged by a city split in respect of its own
source revenue collection potential and thus service delivery.
Enhanced economic growth
A number of studies have suggested that having a citywide local government can increase economic growth compared to fragmented local governance (Slack, 2019) . A study of metropolitan areas in Germany, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States found that cities with fragmented governance structures (measured by the number of municipalities in the metropolitan area) tend to have lower productivity (measured by wage premiums) (Ahrend et al., 2014).
The main reason for this is that fragmentation can negatively impact transportation investment and land use planning with the result that congestion is increased and the city’s overall attractiveness for investment is reduced.
In addition, fragmented governance structures can impede growth because they discourage firms that must face the additional bureaucracy associated with overlapping business and environmental regulations across a number of local governments in the city/metropolitan area.
Another study found that cities with single authorities have denser developments and higher per capita GDP, attract more people, have a higher level of satisfaction with public transportation, and are subject to less pollution than cities with fragmented governance (Ahrend et al., 2016).
Integration and coordination of services
A single local government authority can create a single, integrated plan for urban development and service delivery for the city/metropolitan area as a whole, preventing conflicts and competition that can arise between two different authorities. “There is legal certainty about who does what, eliminating never-ending turf battles” (Community Law Centre, 2007: 7).
This coordination is particularly beneficial for large-scale projects like infrastructure development and public transport. A lack of citywide coordination can result in numerous problems, such as transport infrastructure and services that are not seamless across local boundaries (Slack, 2019).
In addition, as mentioned in the previous section, many services have negative externalities, and if decision making on service delivery is fragmented amongst different local government authorities within a city, there may be negative impacts on residents in the city (e.g. through decisions on the location of landfill sites).
Ineffective governance in one local government area could also have a negative impact on residents in another local government area, for example, inadequately maintained storm water drains in one
local government area can result in flooding in other local government area (Slack, 2019).
By making decisions at the city/metropolitan scale, decisions can be made in the interests of all residents and the negative externalities can be better managed.
Stronger expertise/ specialized expertise to address complex urban challenges
A large single-tier local government will have a large staff complement and will be able to have specialized skills, thus enabling them to address complex urban challenges. Smaller local government authorities with smaller staff complements will be less able to have specialized staff focusing on particular issues.
“Without having to share jurisdiction with another tier of local government, an urban municipality can develop the necessary expertise to deal comprehensively with the key developmental issues that urbanization poses” (Community Law Centre 2007: 6).
Potentially enhanced accountability and clarity
With only one local government authority to deal with in a city, the lines of responsibility are clearer for both citizens and local officials as compared to cities fragmented local government or with multiple tiers of local government. This removes confusion over which authority is responsible for a particular service, simplifying public participation and making it easier to hold decision-makers accountable.
With all services and facilities handled by one organization, the public can also potentially access services and information more easily. “From the residents’ point of view, having a single service provider allows for greater accountability; the urban municipality will be closer to the communities they serve than a distant district municipality.” (Community Law Centre 2007: 7).
The larger size of the unified local government does mean that there need to be small scale participatory processes (e.g. at ward or district scale) in addition to city-wide participatory processes.
Having one single local government authority available for a city can also potentially increase its attraction to investors. “It reduces the transaction cost of having to work with a second layer of local government, which often delays decisions and flows of funding. It could arguably also increase the status of the municipality – for investors there is only one level of local government to work with” (Community Law Centre, 2007: 7).
Increase in social cohesion
Social cohesion can be defined as the level of congruence and unity among divergent groups in society, typically expressed in terms of the sense of belonging felt by members of society (Easterly et al., 2009).
There is widespread agreement that social cohesion contributes to socio-economic development and that it is important for local government to help nurture a more cohesive society (Van der Waldt & Fourie, 2022).
Advancing social cohesion as a government imperative implies inclusive and transparent democratic
practices to promote social justice and prosperity and it also implies addressing social inequality and disparities among groups (Pervaiz et al., 2013; Hino et al., 2019).
Having single local government authorities for entire cities/ metropolitan areas can help build social cohesion through addressing local needs in a participatory way and creating a shared sense of common good (Udenta & Onah, 2023).
If different socio-economic groups within a city are segregated into different local government areas this may have a negative impact on social cohesion within the city.
Case study of citywide/single-tier local government in Cape Town
There are many examples of citywide/single-tier local government in the world, e.g. Toronto and Istanbul, but South African cities are one of the most notable instances of the formation of single local government authorities for entire cities.
South African cities such as Cape Town face enormous challenges in terms of inequity and poverty, and one of the key strategies to address these was to transform cities with fragmented local governance systems into citywide local government authorities.
Prior to the democratic transition in the 1990s, Cape Town metropolitan area was fragmented into 57 different local government bodies and one regional authority. There were 1 regional services council, 3 city councils, 16 municipalities, 10 local councils (with fewer powers and functions than municipalities), a management board with local authority status and 26 management committees directly administered by the Cape Provincial Administration (Schmidt, 1998).
As in other South African cities during the 1980s, there had been campaigns for local government restructuring under the banner of “One City, One Tax-base”, and there had been many calls for a single metropolitan or “megacity” government in the Cape Metropolitan Area, to help ensure greater integration and spatial reallocation of resources (for example, Todes & Watson, 1986).
There was no meaningful progress in this regard, however, until the period of South Africa’s transition to democracy from 1990 onwards. The Local Government Transition Act (LGTA, No. 209 of 1993) (RSA, 1993) made provision for the establishment of a two-tier system of metropolitan governance, called
Transitional Metropolitan Councils.
In terms of the LGTA, negotiations to establish metropolitan government in the Cape Metropolitan Area commenced, The Municipal Demarcation Board proposed six metropolitan sub-structures, or Metropolitan Local Councils (MLCs).
The two largest MLCs were Cape Town (which included the historic core of the former Cape Town City Council area) and Tygerberg (based on the former Bellville City Council area), and the other four MLCs were Blaauwberg, Oostenberg, Helderberg and South Peninsula. Creating these MLCs involved the bundling and unbundling of existing municipalities.
The WCRSC became the basis of the Cape Metropolitan Council (CMC), which was the new metropolitan authority.
At national level, meanwhile, the view on the future of metropolitan government was moving away from two-tier metropolitan government towards single big-city governments, known as “unicities” or “megacities” (Mabin, 2006). This was first expressed in the Green Paper on Local Government (Ministry of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development, 1997) and then in the White Paper on Local Government (DPLG, 1998).
A Unicity Commission was established to oversee this merger in Cape Town. The seven existing councils were merged into one unicity, subsequently named the City of Cape Town, in December 2000. The new City of Cape Town, responsible for the entire Cape Metropolitan Area, had 26,000 staff members and an annual budget of about US$1.2 billion (Pieterse, 2002).
YOU CAN READ THE FULL REPORT OF THE AFRICAN CENTRE FOR CITIES HERE:
www.africancentreforcities.net
Be the first to comment