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PDF
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Type:
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Conference Paper |
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Author:
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Olowu, Dele |
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Conference:
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Workshop on the Workshop 4 |
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Location:
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Indiana University Bloomington |
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Conf. Date:
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June 3-6, 2009 |
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Date:
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2009 |
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URI:
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https://hdl.handle.net/10535/1430
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Sector:
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Social Organization |
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Region:
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Africa |
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Subject(s):
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development
state and local governance
citizen participatory management
resource management
institutional analysis
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Abstract:
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"Discussions on the future of African development led in the late 1980s led to a critical refocusing on governance. Since then enormous resources have been poured by African governments and development partners into improving governance. This paper reviews this experience and suggests a different approach to enhancing African governance, taking a cue from the present consensus on the subject.
"States exist to promote the welfare of their citizens. They do this mainly by providing public services, services that cannot or will not be efficiently, effectively or equitably provided by private sector agencies without prodding from public authorities. The quality of these public services has a direct impact on a county's economy, social integration and living standards. But African states have failed where it matters most--in the provision of adequate public facilities and services that will energize economic performance, consolidate democracy and peace in the continent.
"This paper situates this systemic failure in the triple failure of African public service management institutions to attract and retain talent, to mobilize resources to pay for scarce skills and also to create appropriate institutional mechanisms that would ensure high productivity and responsible performance within the public sector. The paper discusses the present international consensus for assisting Africans to tackle these problems as embedded in the Paris Declaration of 2005 and shows that the program is not only over-ambitious and impractical but also a-historical. The paper then proposes an alternative strategy that responds to the above-mentioned challenges in a way that ensures that Africa modernizes its public service institutions to support democratic developmental states that improve the welfare of their own people in the age of global competition for scarce human resource skills."
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