since these institutions in many countries plagued by widespread poverty do not act in a strategic and rational fashion aid money tends to get tied up in red tape or misappropriated local government institutions that are closer to addressing poverty issues are starved of funds and rarely get them on time for example most african governments have an formula for sharing expenditures four fifths going to central government one fifth to local governments this is a serious misallocation of funds that has not been possible to correct despite pressure to decentralize funding and the establishment of special means to track public expenditure