Several decades after the implementation of the decentralization reform, and given its initial ambitions in terms of governance and development and its ongoing relevance in West African countries, what assessment can be made today ? How do local populations experience this reform ? Taking into account the legislative framework of relations between the State and local authorities, this article analyzes how the levels of governance act together to provide— or not provide— development capacities to the local authorities, and then highlights the increasing number of CSOs (civil society organizations) as a result of the reform and their interactions and actions in favour of territorial development. The analysis is based on the following hypotheses : On the one hand, the practices (adoption of laws and objectives of decentralisation) of central governments do not yet make it possible to achieve the expected governance and development. On the other hand, decentralisation encourages the emergence of more and more CSOs innovating in the development of territories. And our findings confirm these hypotheses. Based exclusively on a collection of documents, the article draws on Page and Goldsmith’s (1987 ; 2010) theoretical framework on multilevel governance, which was reprised by Poupeau (2019), and the human development index (HDI) of the West African Economic and Monetary Union’s eight French-speaking countries to perform a comparative analysis of the reform in these countries based on its initial objectives.