Current Project

The political, institutional and bargaining dynamics of property tax reform in Dakar, Thiès and Saint-Louis, Senegal

This project has two components. The first part aims to critically examine the efforts to identify and register properties and owners in Senegal and the factors underlining the willingness of the central government to invest in reform efforts when the revenue yields or overall benefits do not accrue to them. The second component will examine collaborative relationships in property tax administration between central government administrations and between the central government and local governments, with a particular focus on the variation in strategies between cities to engage with the central government.

Researchers

Colette Nyirakamana

Colette Nyirakamana is Research Lead for the Local Government Revenue Initiative, and Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on building the fiscal autonomy of subnational governments across sub-Saharan Africa.

Camille Barras

Camille Barras is the Policy Lead for the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI). Her areas of work and interest encompass public governance and administration, subnational governance, intergovernmental relations and state-society relations – and their connection with taxation. She is also interested in questions related to the effectiveness and evolution of international development as a field, in evidence generation and uptake as well as in research methods (quantitative, mixed, evaluation). She completed, in 2023, a PhD at the University of Cambridge, investigating the effects of decentralization on political attitudes and behaviours, and holds academic qualifications in political science, public policy and law. Previously, she worked during seven years at the intersection of practice and research, mainly in the international development sector across a variety of organizations and projects in West/North Africa, South/East Asia and Europe. Among others, she worked for a local governance project at UNDP, was a project manager for impact evaluations at the Center for Evaluation and Development and consulted for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

Marie Reine Mukazayire

Marie-Reine is a Research Officer at the Local Government Revenue Initiative, where she focuses on property taxation reforms in francophone African countries such as Benin, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. She holds a Master’s of Global Affairs from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, specializing in Development and Human Rights, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the University of British Columbia. Marie-Reine has a strong academic and professional background in equitable and inclusive governance in sub-Saharan Africa, with experience in qualitative research, stakeholder engagement, and project management.
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