Improving the Effectiveness of Zambia's Constituency Development Fund (Designing Intervention)

Abstract

Faced with an undersupply of critical public infrastructure, the government of Zambia drastically increased amount of funding allocated to the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). This approach aims to decentralize government spending by having communities propose projects to local government, who then selects what to fund through committees lead by members of parliament and then implements them. In partnership with the government, we study two approaches to improve the effectiveness of the CDF and uncovering the benefits and costs of decentralization. First, we test whether deepening the decentralization of CDF approval processes improves project execution speed, and if so, whether it impacts (positively or negatively) project quality and measures of financial leakage. Second, we test if a capacity building intervention aimed at local government bodies (Ward Development Committees) can improve their ability to effectively identify, select, propose, and lobby for, development projects in their communities. We plan to cross-randomize these interventions across 72 districts in rural Zambia.