Suchergebnisse

There is not a single African country that did not attempt public sector reforms in the 1990s. Governments no longer see themselves as sole suppliers of social services, frequently opting for partnerships with the private sector. Efficiency and choice have entered the language of the planning and implementation units of Africa's line ministries, while privatization is no longer the controversial subject it was a decade ago. There have also been moves towards more open and democratic governments. Reforming Africa's Institutions looks at the extent to which reforms undertaken in Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years have enhanced institutional capacities across the breadth of government. To what extent have reforms been internalized and defended by governments? The authors also look specifically at the impact of public sector reforms on these economies and pose the question whether 'ownership can be attained when countries continue to be heavily dependent on external support. The volume is presented in three parts. The first focuses on the issue of reform ownership; on the issues of governance, the political economy of reform ownership, and the contradictions inherent in using aid as an instrument for enhancing domestic reform ownership. Part two examines the nature of incentives in the African civil service and the reforms undertaken in recent years to raise public sector efficiency in Africa. The third part discusses issues related to institutional capabilities in Africa and how they have been affected by the reforms undertaken in the 1990s, including privatization and movement towards political pluralism.

This paper discusses the political economy of oil in Uganda since the announcement of its discovery in 2006. It focuses on the dynamics of oil revenue generation (pre-commercial production) and expenditure, investor-stakeholder contestation (i.e. between bureaucrats, investors/oil companies, and domestic stakeholders), and the role of public policy. Although the Government has created several institutional and regulatory frameworks to manage oil-related revenues and ensure that oil contributes to structural transformation, Uganda is already experiencing many of the stylized facts associated with natural resource exploitation, including macroeconomic instability, rent dissipation, and, more broadly, threats of adverse impact on the environment and on local livelihoods in the oil regions. Besides these, Uganda, and similarly endowed African countries, face the economic challenges related to the global shift in recent decades towards a low-carbon development paradigm and the threatening prospect of oil investments becoming 'stranded assets'. The latter issues are not yet part of the policy conversation in Uganda.

After more than a decade of economic decline and civil war, Uganda was able to return to economic growth thanks to the policies pursued by Museveni's National Resistance Movement which elicited considerable donor support. They include macroeconomic reforms, public sector restructuring, privatisation and decentralization, all with emphasis on poverty reduction. The government recognises that fiscal policy is the key to success and much effort has, in the past decade, gone towards fiscal reforms and the improvement of institutional capacities. Still, in a country with limited finances and a thin tax base the competition for resources has been stiff. While the government has been able to embark on initiatives such as universal primary education, thanks to an improved revenue base and donor support, the decentralization drive is hindered by serious fiscal constraints at the local level.

Although privatization has been a key feature of economic policy in Africa since the early 1990s its sequencing and intensity have varied from country to country, with donor leverage being an important determinant of the pace of implementation. However, although many privatization schemes were undertaken in response to donor demands for reduced government participation in business, the process soon achieved its own dynamics. The positive view of privatization suggests that it went ahead, in spite of domestic opposition, because politicians and bureaucrats perceived real benefits to themselves and their supporters. They could influence the sales to their own benefit, while, on the other hand, a more focused public sector improved service delivery. – privatization ; positive models ; normative models ; economic policy ; sub-Saharan experience

This book derives from a symposium held at Cornell University in April 2014. The symposium explored development financing, which has become an important area of policy discussion in Africa and other developing areas in recent years. Using multifaceted and multidisciplinary analytical approaches, it considers the role of the banking system, the stock market, credit access, external aid, and sovereign wealth funds in the evolving development finance architecture. Further, the volume looks at China's role as an aid donor, the impact of BRICs partnerships in South Africa, the role of NEPAD in mobilizing resources for infrastructure development, and the links between law, trade, and regional integration. The study concurs with previous analyses that greater access to credit by the poor represents the most effective way of fighting poverty and raising the standards of living in Africa. Cornell's Institute for African Development and the African Development Bank were cosponsors of the 2014 symposium.

Uganda in the 1970s and early 1980s was one of Africa's more tragic economic stories. Emerging from civil war, it had to embark on reform in the early to mid-1980s from a position of severe political weakness. In the study, the effects of economic policy at the aggregate level are discussed in detail, but 'snapshot' empirical analyses of responses at the household level, both urban and rural, are also presented. Uganda was for many years considered to be Africa's 'worst case'; its recent recovery thus provides hope for similar countries in the region.