| The Library, Documentation and Information Department of the African Studies
Centre has compiled this web dossier on privatization in Africa to coincide with
the first
West Africa Day. The conference, which will be held in Leiden on 15
November 2005, is being organized by the African Studies Centre (ASC) in Leiden
in cooperation with the Development Policy Review Network (DPRN). This dossier
begins with background information about the West Africa Day and then provides a
list of titles on privatization in Africa. The title section is based on the ASC
library's collection and contains titles of books and articles published within
the last ten years. Each title links directly to the corresponding record in the
online catalogue that provides details about the title as well as abstracts of
articles and edited works. The dossier concludes with a number of web resources.
- Background
- Bibliography on Privatization in Africa (in Africa in general and in
West Africa)
- Selected Web Resources
For further information, please email us at asclibrary@ascleiden.nl or phone +31
(0)71 527 3354.
Over the last decade, the term ‘privatization’ has been very much in vogue in
both the North and the South in policy guidelines of governments and development
agencies. Seen as the panacea for the evils of inefficient government
bureaucracies and poor levels of public-service delivery by neo-liberal
economies, it has, however, become a highly controversial issue. Leftist
thinkers have condemned the privatization of former state-owned services as a
sell-out of public goods and as a final victory of market capitalism that tends
to make the rich even more affluent and the poor more destitute. Privatization
can take many forms and may relate to the transformation of state-owned services
into commercial companies and to the rise of an economy dominated by private
enterprise. Its relationship with development policies has fuelled even greater
(political) controversy.
Unfortunately, this ideological debate is not conducive to assessing current
privatization policies and efforts, and their effect on societies that have been
subjected to privatization. Particularly in its developmental relationship with
a host of West-African countries, privatization has played a crucial role in the
pursuance of ‘good governance’ and ‘aid effectiveness’. Privatization is on the
agenda of the first West Africa Day to encourage debate about its merits and its
failures for this specific region of Africa, and to consider how policy makers,
NGOs and researchers can fulfil complementary roles in fuelling successful
economic development in an attempt to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
West Africa has a long history of privatization. In the first half of the 1980s
more than 227 firms were privatized in the whole of Africa. Three-quarters of
these were located in just six countries, five of which were in West Africa
(Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Guinea, Niger and Togo). By the late 1980s, 12 of
the 18 Francophone countries had public-enterprise programmes in place. Between
1988 and 1993 the Nigerian government disposed of 55 small-scale state-owned
enterprises (SOEs). In Ghana 159 SOEs were sold or liquidated between 1991 and
1995. However these official data underestimate the true number of
privatizations, since countries like Mali with a sizable privatization programme
are not included in the databases, while in other countries, such as Benin, only
a small percentage of the real number of privatizations were reported. In total,
it is estimated that 847 privatizations were effected in West Africa between
1980 and 1995.
The results of these privatizations have been mixed to disappointing. Although
there has not been a systematic assessment of the performance of privatized
firms, no African country can be labelled as having been totally successful when
it comes to privatization. The privatization programme in Mali, for example, was
too hastily implemented, with the result that old problems have persisted. Often
the governments involved have not been able to execute a restructuring programme
before privatization and to inject sufficient new capital to allow the
privatized entities to be successful on the market. In the whole of West Africa,
the level of public-service provision remains appalling, with major power cuts
hampering economic growth in Nigeria, Chad and elsewhere, with solid waste
collection being inadequate in all major cities, and private healthcare
facilities being inaccessible for the majority of the West African population
due to high costs.
In the second half of the 1990s privatization took on new dimensions. All kinds
of police and control functions belonging to the core of the state’s prerogative
were increasingly outsourced to private institutions. In Chad the control and
organization of the supply of fuel wood in the capital N’Djaména is now
entrusted to a public-private enterprise run by a German consultancy firm. The
contract for distributing identity cards and passports was awarded to a Belgian
firm, leading to much higher costs for the Chadian population. Customs services
are often delegated to foreign private entities. Functions of the state, such as
the decentralization of administrative powers, are being taken over by NGOs
manned by local elites or political straw men with strong links with the state
who reap the benefits from donor investment in reform of the public sector in
terms of well-paid contracts, employment and opportunities to advance their
careers by means of education and promotion to posts in international agencies.
In many countries, the state in increasingly being privatized from within, in
the sense that state departments are being used to access money for the people
running the departments. Security is becoming an ever-scarcer commodity, leading
to the breakdown of the state in, for example, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Areas
of these countries where minerals have been found are in reality being run as
private enterprises, with their own connections to global markets for (illegal)
diamonds and the like. As a result, the boundaries between the state and the
private sector have become increasingly vague and, in some cases, non-existent.
The question is whether this can be labelled an evolution towards failed states
or whether it is just another phase in the process of state formation for
African states.
A real assessment of the pros and cons of these developments is hard to make, as
it is sometimes very difficult to look behind the scenes, to see who is reaping
the real benefits from privatization. It would be hard to argue that the
population of West Africa is now better off because of the privatization of the
state, given their poor and often deteriorating living conditions and the lack
of public-service provision. On the other hand, it would be hard to single out
privatization as the only factor responsible for the lack of progress as there
are many other developments that also impinge negatively on the lives of West
Africans.
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