Achieving Millennium Development Goals in Africa requires a quantum leap in access to and quality of services. To this end, better diagnosis and understanding of both failures and successes in service delivery is crucial. In this paper, we review micro- level approaches to the study of service delivery. We focus on two types of service provider surveys--Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) and Quantitative Service Delivery Survey (QSDS)-- which have been developed for empirical analysis of incentives, service provider behavior and the resulting efficiency and equity of public expenditures, key to producing good outcomes, such as improved welfare, health and education. We also examine Citizens Report Card Surveys (CRCS), in which users specify their experiences of service quality, and which are used as feedback mechanisms from users to service providers and policymakers.