This paper was prepared for the Mastercard Foundation report, Secondary Education in Africa: Preparing Youth for the Future of Work. This paper focuses on school-based management and decentralization in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The need for an improvement in the management of secondary schools in SSA is particularly critical as SSA is lagging behind other regions in youth access to secondary schools, access to quality schooling and developing skills in schools which open pathways to employment. At the same time the secondary school sector is expanding rapidly in most African states, with a focus on universal secondary education. This trend is being accompanied in most countries with a drive to decentralize decision-making to these secondary schools, with much focus on school-based management. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, schools in most sub-Saharan African countries have little autonomy. The paper seeks to answer the question why this is still the case.