Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

States and Markets in Africa

  • Chapter
The Market and the State

  • 51 Accesses

Abstract

The debate over the role and significance of privatisation in Africa has assumed increasing importance in Africa over the last decade. As its dimensions have come into sharper focus, privatisation has helped occasion a wider-ranging debate over the role of the African state in the management of economic change and development — a debate, that is, about the nature of the relationship between states and private sectors in Africa, and of the proper boundaries between them.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. See R. Hemming and A. M. Mansoor, Privatization and Public Enterprises (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1988), pp. 6–7.

    Google Scholar 

  2. S. Young, ‘The Nature of Privatisation in Britain, 1979–85’, West European Politics, 9 (April 1986), 235–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. See, for example, P. Cook and C. Kirkpatrick, ‘Privatisation in Less Developed Countries: An Overview’, in P. Cook and C. Kirkpatrick (eds), Privatisation in Less Developed Countries (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1988), pp. 31–3;

    Google Scholar 

  4. R. Hemming and A. M. Mansoor, ‘Is Privatization the Answer?’ Finance and Development, 25 (September 1988) 32–3;

    Google Scholar 

  5. T. Killick and S. Commander, ‘State Divestiture as a Policy Instrument in Developing Countries’, World Development 16 (December 1988) 1,473–5, 1,477;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. and E. J. Wilson III, ‘Privatization in Africa: Domestic Origins, Current Status and Future Scenarios’, Issue, 16, 2 (1988), 24.

    Google Scholar 

  7. E. Berg and M. M. Shirley, Divestiture in Developing Countries (Washington, D.C.: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1987). (Hereafter cited as IBRD.)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Individual countries have been counted under the ‘privatization’ heading either because such activity has already occurred or because there has been a formal public commitment to divestiture. In four instances, no evidence of privatisation over the past decade has been located: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Comoros Islands and Djibouti. In three others -Cape Verde, Lesotho and Namibia (before independence) — the evidence is suggestive but not sufficiently detailed to allow inclusion. The best general survey of the African experience with privatisation remains T. M. Callaghy and E. J. WilsonIII, ‘Africa: Policy, Reality or Ritual?’ in R. Vernon (ed.), The Promise of Privatization: A Challenge for U.S. Policy (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988), pp. 179–230. For a valuable compendium of information on the privatisation programmes of eighty-three countries — sixty-six of them LDCs and twenty-six of the latter African — see

    Google Scholar 

  9. R. Candoy-Sekse with A. R. Palmer, Techniques of Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: Inventory of Country Experience and Reference Materials, vol. III (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 1988).

    Google Scholar 

  10. C. Young and T. Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison, Wisc: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 281–6.

    Google Scholar 

  11. See T. Killick, Development Economics in Action: A Study of Economic Policies in Ghana (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1978), pp. 311, 313–4, 320–2; and

    Google Scholar 

  12. E. Hutchful (ed.) The IMF and Ghana: The Confidential Record (London: Zed Books, 1987), pp. 20–2, 27–36, 143–216.

    Google Scholar 

  13. See R. E. Stren, ‘Urban Services in Africa: Public Management or Privatisation?’ in Privatisation in Less Developed Countries, pp. 217–47

    Google Scholar 

  14. and M. A. Cohen, ‘Francophone Africa’, in D. C. Rowat (ed.), International Handbook on Local Government Reorganization (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), pp. 418–20.

    Google Scholar 

  15. See T. Killick, ‘Twenty-Five Years in Development: The Rise and Impending Decline of Market Solutions’, Development Policy Review, 4 (June 1986) 101–2;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. P. Young, The Enterprise Imperative: Promoting Growth in Developing Countries (London: Adam Smith Institute, 1988), pp. 8–15; and West Africa, No. 3,610 (10 November 1986), p. 2,369.

    Google Scholar 

  17. See S. Kagwe, ‘Some Organization Factors Affecting the Performance of Public Enterprises in Africa’, in African Association for Public Administration and Management, Public Enterprises Performance and the Privatization Debate: A Review of Options for Africa (New Delhi: Vikas, 1987), pp. 51–3, 58–9; and

    Google Scholar 

  18. J. R. Nellis, Public Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 1986), pp. 12–17.

    Google Scholar 

  19. See E. J. Wilson III, ‘Contested Terrain: A Comparative and Theoretical Reassessment of State-Owned Enterprise in Africa’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 22 (March 1984) 4–27; and also

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. IBRD, World Development Report 1983 (Washington, D.C., 1983), pp. 48–51.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Nellis, Public Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa, pp. 17–41; and Cal-laghy and Wilson, ‘Africa: Policy, Reality or Ritual?’, pp. 191–222 passim. See also M. M. Shirley, Managing State-Owned Enterprises (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 1983)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Y. Haile-Mariam and B. Mengistu, ‘Public Enterprises and the Privatisation Thesis in the Third World’, Third World Quarterly, 10 (October 1988), 1,576–8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. and J. Nellis and S. Kikeri, ‘Public Enterprise Reform: Privatization and the World Bank’, World Development, 17 (May 1989) 660–3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Some writers caution against ignoring the functional significance of such activities within the context of the patrimonial authority patterns tending to typify politics in postcolonial African states. See Callaghy and Wilson, ‘Africa: Policy, Reality or Ritual?’, pp. 179–80; and R. Sandbrook, ‘Patrimonialism and the Failing of Parastatals: Africa in Comparative Perspective’, in Privatisation in Less Developed Countries, pp. 174–5.

    Google Scholar 

  25. And not least at official level; see E. J. Wilson, ‘The Public-Private Debate’, Africa Report, 31 (July/August 1986) 93.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Between 1980 and 1988 twenty-five African states underwent no fewer than ninety-nine debt reschedulings; E. V. K. Jaycox, ‘Structural Adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa: The World Bank’s Perspective’, Issue, 18, 1 (1989) 38.

    Google Scholar 

  27. See also T. W. Parfitt and S. P. Riley, The African Debt Crisis (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 14–26.

    Google Scholar 

  28. For the Ivory Coast and Kenya, see Callaghy and Wilson, ‘Africa: Policy, Reality or Ritual?’ pp. 203–4 and 192–3 respectively. For Nigeria, see T. Falola and J. Ihonvbere, The Rise and Fall of Nigeria’s Second Republic, 1979–84 (London: Zed Books, 1985), pp. 164–5; and Guardian, 7 November 1983, p. 15. For Senegal

    Google Scholar 

  29. see J. P. Lewis, ‘Aid, Structural Adjustment, and Senegalese Agriculture’, in M. Gersovitz and J. Waterbury (eds), The Political Economy of Risk and Choice in Senegal (London: Frank Cass, 1987), pp. 296–302, 304–7. For Togo, see

    Google Scholar 

  30. K. Djondo, ‘Anatomy of a Privatisation Scheme: The Togo Example’, African Business, 114 (February 1988) 16. For South Africa

    Google Scholar 

  31. see V. Padayachee, ‘Private International Banks, the Debt Crisis and the Apartheid State, 1982–1985’, African Affairs, 87 (July 1988) 361–76;

    Google Scholar 

  32. T. Young, ‘Restructuring the State in South Africa: New Strategies of Incorporation and Control’, Political Studies, 37 (March, 1989) 69–70, 76–7; and ARBIES, 22 (30 November 1985), p. 7,958.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. See, for example, M. Shirley, ‘The Experience with Privatization’, Finance and Development, 25 (September 1988) 35;

    Google Scholar 

  34. M. Alexander, ‘Privatisation in Africa’, in V. V. Ramanadham (ed.), Privatisation in Developing Countries (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 323–47; and Nel-lis and Kikeri, ‘Public Enterprise Reform’, pp. 664–5. See also World Development Report 1983, pp. 85–7; and

    Google Scholar 

  35. IBRD, World Development Report 1987 (Washington D.C., 1987), p. 68.

    Google Scholar 

  36. See, for example, P. Mosley, ‘The Politics of Economic Liberalization: USAID and the World Bank in Kenya, 1980–4’, African Affairs, 85 (January 1986), pp. 107–19;

    Google Scholar 

  37. Dan Baum, ‘The Wayward Siblings’, Africa Report, 34 (January/February 1989), p. 50;

    Google Scholar 

  38. C. L. Morna, ‘Ghana: The Privatization Drive’, Africa Report, 33 (November/December 1988) 62; and Callaghy and Wilson, ‘Africa: Policy, Reality or Ritual?’ pp. 185–6.

    Google Scholar 

  39. These figures are calculated from C. Vuylsteke, Techniques of Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: Methods and Implementation, vol. I (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 1988), Table 3, pp. 177–80. Table 3 includes data on twenty-six African countries, and appears to omit liquidations.

    Google Scholar 

  40. On the Ivory Coast, see Callaghy and Wilson, ‘Africa: Policy, Reality or Ritual?’, pp. 203–7. On Togo, see Djondo, ‘Anatomy of a Privatisation Scheme’, pp. 16–7; P. M. Hirschoff, ‘The Privatization Drive’, Africa Report, 31 (July/August 1986) 89–92

    Google Scholar 

  41. and H. Nankani, Techniques of Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises: Selected Country Case Studies, vol. II (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 1988), pp. 137–46.

    Google Scholar 

  42. On the role of public sector lobbies over the privatisation, see Callaghy and Wilson, ‘Africa: Policy, Reality or Ritual?’, pp. 194 (Tanzania) and 199–200 (Nigeria); Shirley, ‘Experience with Privatization’, p. 34; and P. Cook and M. Minogue, Towards a Political Economy of Privatization in Less Developed Countries’ (International Development Centre, University of Manchester, 1989, mimeo).

    Google Scholar 

  43. R. L. Sklar, ‘Beyond Capitalism and Socialism in Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 26 (March 1988) 11–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. See Wilson, ‘Privatization in Africa’, pp. 26–8; and H. Bienen and J. Waterbury, ‘The Political Economy of Privatization in Developing Countries’, World Development, 17 (May 1989) 629.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Ralph A. Young
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, UK

    Michael Moran (Professor of Government) & Maurice Wright (Professor of Government) (Professor of Government) &  (Professor of Government)

Copyright information

© 1991 Michael Moran and Maurice Wright

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Young, R.A. (1991). States and Markets in Africa. In: Moran, M., Wright, M. (eds) The Market and the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21619-2_9

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation