The African Union of Local Authorities (AULA) And Global Trends in Regional Management of Grassroots Institutions : Responses and Lapses

There have been a number of initiatives at the global level to address the challenges of grassroots institutions. The present study is a critical appraisal of this initiative from the African scene. It is also significant to point out here that the theme is yet to receive significant scholarly attention even in other regions of the world in spite of the growing literature on local government administration. The approach is purely historical and the study makes use of online documents of different international agencies and organizations. Among these are documents of International Union of Local Authorities (IULA), African Union of Local Authorities(AULA), later renamed United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLG-A), Cities Alliance (CA), United Nations Advisory Committee of Local Authorities (UNACLA), Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments (GTF), and the World Bank. It equally relies on published scholarly works that have some facts and figures on issues relating to global initiatives in grassroots development. Some of our personal fieldworks on local government administration have provided facts and figures on a number of practical issues with regard to assessing the veracity of the available data and documents through comparison, synchronism and the likes. The study demonstrates that despite the existence of a number of lapses, the African Union of Local Authorities (AULA) is gradually laying a foundation that would constitute an asset to the search for sustainable development of grassroots institutions.