Relationship between Premature Incorporation and Land Administration Performance; the Case of Small Cities in Oromia, West Hararge Zone.
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Date
2018-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
It is natural that number of cities and population size of cities have inverse relationship. Our planet has few cities with large population size and many cities which increased in number as the population size gets smaller. The data about cities in Oromia Region reflects the same phenomenon. In 2014, out of the 629 cities in the region, 46 (7.3%) and in West Hararge Zone, 2 of the 31 which was 6.5% met the criteria to form complete form of urban governance in relation to their population size (indirectly city size). From the 629 cities in Oromia, 529 (84.1 %) and in West Hararge Zone 25 (80.6 %) were cities of the least grades which are currently given the name Municipal City Administration or Growing Municipal City Administration. This study is conducted to justify that there was premature incorporation of small cities that affected Land Administration Performance. In doing so, it tried to answer the following two questions mainly. The questions are: ‘Were the small cities Prematurely incorporated?’ and ‘Was there significant relationship between land administration performance and city maturity level (expressed in terms of revenue collected by the cities)?’. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were applied. The study used data that ranged from 2005 to 2009 EFY. It was a longitudinal study. Nine cities which are serving as woreda administration seats were used as sampling frame of this study. The data was collected from all these cities. It was found that the cities were collecting about 53% of the revenue they planned to collect, the average annual budget gap of the cities was -5,327,069 Birr which was 2.68 times their average actual expenditure, fiscal gap of the cities were increasing from time to time, though revenue was specified as a criterion for incorporation, it was not considered accordingly when incorporating the cities, and the manpower in most of the cities was filled below 35% of their approved structure. The cities also lacked other logistics. The Kendall Tau-b and Spearman correlation analysis done also showed that there was moderate to strong association between revenue of the cities and their land administration performance. From these results, the study concluded that the small cities were prematurely incorporated and increase in revenue of the cities improves their land administration performance, though it is not the sole factor to do so. The study has forwarded recommendations. Among the recommendations forwarded were: due consideration shall be given to revenue while incorporating cities, types and standards of services based on city grades shall be prepared, the minimum share of capital expenditure in the cities shall be specified, the subsidy range that small cities get from woredas shall be clearly stated and the representation of the cities in the woreda council shall be reconsidered since the council is dominated by rural kebele issues. There shall be a policy which guides the regional urban development effort.