Sub-Saharan Africa Urged to Match Citizen Engagement Gains with Stronger Fiscal Disclosure and Oversight
New Open Budget Survey data shows real progress on public participation and growing efforts to make budgets more inclusive, but lack of disclosure of debt and tax information, and weak follow-through on audit recommendations, threatens to stall fiscal accountability.
3 June 2026 — Governments across Sub-Saharan Africa have made measurable gains in opening up budget processes to citizens, with regional participation scores climbing steadily since 2019 and innovative engagement practices taking root. Sustaining this momentum — and translating it into stronger public trust — will require closing persistent gaps on tax and debt accountability and ensuring that audit findings on how public money is spent drive concrete change. Given acute debt and domestic resource mobilization challenges, these reforms are more essential than ever.
According to the Open Budget Survey (OBS) 2025, the world’s most comprehensive independent assessment of budget transparency, participation, and oversight, the region has continued to build foundations for accountability despite rising debt and enormous fiscal pressures. Across the 32 comparable Sub-Saharan African countries assessed, the regional participation score rose two points between 2023 and 2025, governments are increasingly publishing easy to read Citizens Budgets and several countries are pioneering inclusive, multi-stage engagement with civil society.
The challenge now is ensuring that these reforms are matched by deeper disclosure on how taxes are raised and how public money is borrowed and by stronger connections between the institutions responsible for scrutinizing spending.
The survey identifies key problem areas where targeted action would yield high returns:
As fiscal space shrinks, governments are disclosing too little about how taxes are collected and managed. Only 15% of countries publish even minimal information on tax expenditures in their draft budgets, limiting public insight into who benefits and how much revenue is lost at a time when domestic resource mobilization is critical.
Debt transparency is also lacking. Just over a third of countries provide key figures on net new borrowing, total outstanding debt, and interest payments in their draft budgets and only 12% (four out of 33) of countries publish satisfactory data on the projected composition of outstanding debt — including interest rates, maturity profiles, and breakdowns of external versus domestic debt. Findings from a new OBS debt pilot in 10 Sub-Saharan Africa countries show that formal oversight authority over debt is rarely exercised in practice and that public participation in debt decisions is rare.
Audit follow-through remains uneven. Only three countries — Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa and Tanzania — have Supreme Audit Institutions or legislatures that track and report on the implementation of all audit recommendations and only five finance ministries (Ghana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Uganda, and South Africa) report on actions taken in response, and none do so comprehensively. In 23 countries, parliamentary finance committees examine the draft budget but do not publish reports with their findings before budget approval.
Despite gaps, the survey also highlights promising practices across the region. Citizens Budgets are now published online in 82% of countries and 55% of countries present information on policies targeting the poorest in their draft budgets. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has institutionalized civil society participation across the budget cycle, including new sessions to review in-year and year-end execution. Benin has strengthened both legislative and audit oversight, with the National Assembly’s Finance and Trade Committee publishing more frequent reports on budget execution and making findings on the Court of Accounts’ audit report publicly available earlier. In The Gambia, a civic-led coalition partnered with the executive and audit office to produce citizens’ versions of the Enacted Budget and Audit Report and successfully challenged an unlawful budget allocation in the Supreme Court — ultimately returning funds to the public purse. These are exactly the kinds of innovations that, if adopted more widely, could transform the region’s accountability systems from formal compliance into genuine public confidence.
The stakes are high. Governments that build credible, transparent budget systems are better placed to manage debt sustainably, mobilize domestic revenue, attract investment, and — most importantly — earn the trust of their citizens. The tools and good practice examples are there. The OBS 2025 offers a clear, evidence-based roadmap for the next phase of reform.
Recommendations
The Open Budget Survey 2025 encourages governments in Sub-Saharan Africa to:
- Strengthen budget transparency by ensuring key budget documents are consistently published on time and by expanding the depth of information provided on budget execution, debt, fiscal risks, and revenues — including tax information and tax exemptions — and making it available in citizen-focused formats.
- Disclose comprehensive information on the composition of outstanding debt and long-term fiscal sustainability and ensure that legislatures, audit offices, and the public can exercise meaningful oversight of borrowing decisions.
- Institutionalize formal public participation mechanisms throughout all stages of the budget cycle and improve inclusiveness by better accommodating underrepresented groups and providing clear feedback on how public input was used.
- Publish clear reports to track actions taken in response to all audit recommendations and enable legislatures and audit institutions to expand public hearings and channels for citizen input into budget scrutiny and audit processes.
Development partners and donors can reinforce this agenda by supporting reforms that strengthen tax and debt accountability and that expand public dialogue in the budget process. Civil society organizations across the region are encouraged to use the OBS data to engage governments constructively on these priorities.
About The Author
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
