RRojas Databank: The Róbinson Rojas Archive.-Major issues of people's participation. Civil Society.- Africa

In preparation for the Human Development Report every year, the HDRO commissions a number of experts to write papers on issues related to the theme of the Report. The following is a compilation of selected Occasional Papers written since 1992. Individually, each paper brings to light a key facet of human development in different parts of the world. Together, they help establish a framework of tools, concept and action to address the issue of human development worldwide.

As is well-known, the entrepreneur is someone who has the vision to recognise and exploit new opportunities; is not averse to taking calculated risks; has the ability to combine resources and organise people; and is an active leader, not a passive follower. The crucial role played by such people in promoting economic development needs no elaboration. As much as they thrive in an ambience of abundant market opportunities, entrepreneurs are adversely affected by an unduly restrictive business environment. In such an environment, their typical response is to shy away from long-term investments of a productive nature and seek quick returns in rent-seeking pursuits. And this is very much to the detriment of output and employment creation.

Although African countries have a long tradition of entrepreneurship, as demonstrated by their history of long-distance trade and the growth of once-renowned trading centres, most of the post-independence period has not been conducive to fostering indigenous entrepreneurship. This is true for at least two reasons.

First, the thinking that dominated development strategies of this period was anchored on the presumption that the state itself could effectively perform the role of the entrepreneur, in effect substituting for private leaders of business. Such thinking was not devoid of logic. After all, the private sector was small and fragile, being seriously deficient in capital and management know-how. Moreover, the experience of the socialist countries lent credibility to the notion of the state as an entrepreneur. Whatever the merits in the thinking of the day, it unfortunately meant crowding out private entrepreneurs, thereby narrowing the opportunities available for development.

Second, it was widely believed that growth would be brought about by concentrating on large-scale enterprises, to the neglect of those of medium and small size. As a World Bank study noted,

During the first three decades of independence policymakers focused mainly on promoting large-scale industrial enterprises. These were deemed the hallmarks of development and were generously supported by public policy. Large firms enjoyed preferential access to credit, foreign exchange concessions, and protection from competition through subsidies, tariffs, quotas, and exclusive licenses. Capacity was often expanded with little regard to cost or profitability.67

However, the record of state-centred strategies focusing on large-scale enterprises has led to a reappraisal of the role of both the state (vis-à-vis the private sector) and large enterprises (vis-à-vis the informal sector).

In the 1980s the role of the public and private sectors shifted decisively. As the weaknesses of the postindependence approach to development became clearer, governments began to include local entrepreneurs in their long-term strategies for employment and growth. In most countries the public sector moved away from economic dominance toward greater support for private initiatives, both local and foreign. Controls over foreign investments were relaxed; local capital accumulated through rent-seeking began to move into productive activities. Governments generally became more conscious of the effect of policy on both day-to-day business decisions and long-term private investment. 68

As a result, there is now greater appreciation of the significance of the informal sector and of the need to support and nurture it. This is, after all, a sector that is estimated to account for some 60 per cent of employment and 20 per cent of output in the urban areas of Africa. 69 The HDR93 itself notes,

in Sub-Saharan Africa, the informal sector increased by 6.6 per cent a year between 1980 and 1989, substantially faster than the modern sector. Between 1980 and 1985, while the modern sector added only 500,000 jobs to the urban labour market, the informal sector created some six million new jobs. By 1990, the informal sector employed more than 60 per cent of the urban workforce more than twice the share employed by the modern sector. 70

While the dynamism and robustness of the informal sector is a controversial issue, 71 any long-term strategy for African development must begin with a proper appreciation of both the strengths and limitations of this sector. On the positive side, perhaps its greatest strength is its responsiveness to market forces. Owing to relatively modest start-up capital requirements, entry is often easy, thereby opening doors for large numbers of people. It is for this reason that it has been characterised as `a poor man's sector'. One should hasten to add that it is also a poor woman's sector, given the significant role played by women in informal activities. The sector is also credited, in relative terms, with the efficient use of local resources. Unlike large-scale enterprises, those in the informal sector are mostly dependent on local raw materials, use local labour and produce for the local market. Their linkages are therefore rooted in the local economy. They also use or adapt indigenous technology, which although not sophisticated is fairly flexible and suitable for local circumstances.

It is the sum total of these and related characteristics that point to a potential in the sector. However, care should be taken not to exaggerate its possibilities or to underestimate its limitations. In the first place, it should be realised that most people enter the informal sector because the doors to the formal sector are barred to them or because they have been squeezed out of that sector. It is therefore a sector that is largely concerned with survival. To say that it has performed better than the formal sector is more of a comment on the latter than on the former. This suggests that the purported `dynamism' of the informal sector is relative and should not be blown out of proportions.

Even in the area of employment, where its contribution is beyond dispute, the potential for creating jobs over the long haul should be regarded soberly. The sector

cannot be expected to continue to absorb the growing number of migrants into the urban areas, who in most African countries contribute four to five per cent to urban growth on top of the three per cent rate of natural growth. The informal sector would have to grow by 10-15 per cent per annum to absorb this kind of population growth productively. The demand conditions facing it are not conducive for this. 72

In addition, one has to take into account constraints to entrepreneurship in general and those specific to particular types of enterprises. The general constraints on entrepreneurship in contemporary Africa as political instability; lack of business confidence; deteriorating infrastructures; uncoordinated policies on business promotion and development; and insufficient knowledge in government about the business sector. 73

Most of these are self-explanatory points and can be passed with brief comments. Political instability refers not only to the obvious cases such as Somalia and Liberia, where there is a total breakdown of government and civil society, but also to all cases involving disputes regarding the legitimacy of government. The examples of Kenya, Sudan, and Liberia come readily to mind, and they can be expanded without much effort. If a situation is perceived by potential investors to be characterised by political instability, they are bound to be careful in committing resources, because investment implies some faith in the future.

The question of business confidence is closely related to political instability, but it also includes the perceptions of entrepreneurs regarding government policies and the sustainability of any attempts at reform implementation. The modus operandi of the government bureaucracy is also an important factor; in particular, involved procedures that are discouraging to the investor are bound to sap business confidence. Also, government policies that give contradictory signals (especially in the move towards greater market orientation in the economy) undermine business confidence. Related to this are government financial, trade and labour policies that may discourage private investment. The importance of the availability of infrastructure (power, transport, communications, water supply, etc.) is too obvious to require elaboration.

A point that does not always get the attention it deserves is the insufficient knowledge that policy makers have about the private sector and its role, leading in some cases to hostility towards the sector. Even where there is goodwill, government assistance to the private sector is usually not focused and properly targeted. These general problems can be found to one degree or another in virtually every African country. In addition, there are problems that are specific to different types of enterprises. For informal sector microenterprises, the major problems are limited and segmented markets; crude management and production techniques; and inadequate institutional/public policy support. 74

Microenterprises generally involve limited investment (between US$ 100 and 5,000) and employ about 5-10 persons. The size of the markets they face is only as large as their personal relationships; thus, they are limited. Owing to the low educational levels of most owners, their knowledge of management and production techniques is also limited. And, as noted earlier, governments have seldom been enthusiastic in providing support to microenterprises. However, informal sector entrepreneurs have attempted to overcome some of these problems by creating linkages with the formal sector and through inter-generational expansion. The former involves formal sector entrepreneurs providing market outlets to their counterparts in the informal sector, while the latter means business expansion from one generation of family ownership to the next as greater capital and experience is accumulated.

When one moves to small/intermediate-sized enterprises (investment of up to $1 million and employment of up to 100 persons), one encounters constraints of managerial capacity and of technological adaptation and management, as well as weaknesses in government schemes for enterprise-level support. Thus, the constraints within which African entrepreneurship has to operate, especially with respect to informal sector microenterprises, are real. However, these constraints (others could also be cited) do not condone the policies that African governments have pursued with respect to this sector, policies of benign neglect at times but of hostility in most cases. There is clearly a need for adopting more positive and more supportive policies. In this regard the proposals put forward in ECA's Strategic Agenda for Development Management in Africa in the 1990s75 are particularly relevant. At the level of microenterprises, the proposals are for establishing more extensive market linkages between the formal and informal sectors and for enhancing the role of governments and NGOs in the provision of training, credit and enterprise-level support. For small- and intermediate-scale enterprises, measures are proposed to overcome managerial constraints; to surmount difficulties with technology transfer and adaptation; and to enhance enterprise-level support systems. Whatever the nature of particular proposals may be, the point is that promoting human development in Africa requires the fostering of entrepreneurship in both the formal and informal sectors.

The unemployment problem in Africa has been grave for a long time now and as the latest evidence reveals it is clearly on the increase. In spite of the limitation of the data, available evidence points to the fact that unemployment increased from 7.7 per cent in 1978 to 22.8 per cent in 1990 and is projected to increase to 30 per cent by the year 2000. On the other hand, underemployment is estimated to affect 100 million Africans. 76

Employment is basically a function of the interaction between supply and demand factors. On the supply side, the major determinant is the population growth rate, reinforced by the pace of urbanisation and the expansion of education. The major factor on the demand side is the rate of growth of output in conjunction with its employment elasticity, factor intensities in production, and relative factor prices. A new dimension of the demand factor is the massive retrenchment of labour that almost invariably accompanies the implementation of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs).

In many countries, the interaction of these forces has given rise to a situation in which growth in formal sector employment has tended to lag considerably behind growth in output, a phenomenon which HDR93 describes as "jobless growth" or "growth without employment". However, the African situation cannot usefully be described as growth without employment; it would be more accurate to characterise it as "neither growth nor employment". Between 1973 and 1987, for example, the average annual growth rates of GDP and employment were 2.6 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively, 77 both of them lower than the rate of growth of the labour force. Thus, the poor employment record of African countries is a result of the dynamic interaction between fast population growth on the one hand, and poor economic performance on the other. According to ILO/JASPA, nearly six million people join the African labour force every year, whereas the formal sector engages less than 10 per cent of the total labour force.

However, this general picture hides variations between countries. While there are some countries (e.g., Mauritius, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Seychelles, Niger), in which the number of persons in wage employment appears to have increased, there are others (e.g., Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Zambia) in which, after initial sharp increases, paid employment had to suffer considerable declines subsequent to the adoption of SAPs. 78 As in other developing countries, most unemployment in Africa is concentrated in urban areas and it is largely in the form of women and youth unemployment. But the African situation is even more critical. The unemployment rate for women is thrice as high as that for men. And the youth, who account for only one-third of the labour force, represent 60-75 per cent of unemployment. Moreover,

Africa is the only continent where the proportion of persons aged between 15 and 24 years in relation to the overall population will continue to grow over the next 30 years. Our estimates indicate that on the average only 30 per cent of students are able to join the second level of education from the first and a mere 11.5 per cent from the second to the tertiary level. As a result between the first and third level about 90 per cent are forced to enter the labour market. 79

It is also interesting that while the bulk of the unemployed in the 1970s were primary school leavers, in the 1980s their place was taken by high school leavers. 80 There has also been a marked rise in the number of unemployed university graduates. This, coupled with inadequate incentive systems and unattractive political realities, has led to a considerable brain drain from Africa. The available evidence, although patchy, is revealing:

Sudan for example lost a high proportion of its professional workers; 17 per cent of doctors and dentists, 20 per cent of university teaching staff, 30 per cent of engineers and 45 per cent of surveyors in 1978 alone. In the early 1980's Ghana lost 60 per cent of trained medical doctors, despite the critical shortage in the health service. UNDP estimates that between 1985 and 1990 Africa lost 60,000 middle and high-level managers. 81

As indicated earlier, the unemployment problem has been exacerbated by labour retrenchment in the public sector introduced as part of SAPs. What lends the problem particular gravity is that in Africa the public sector accounts for more than 50 per cent of formal sector employment, the figure for many countries being as high as 80 per cent. 82 And the pace of retrenchment has been increasing over the years. "Whereas in the 1980s public sector retrenchment accounted for about 10 per cent-20 per cent of total public sector employment, in the 1990s, the target public sector retrenchment rates are in the range of 20 per cent-30 per cent of public sector employment".83

Thus, on account of poor economic performance and extensive retrenchment programmes, the capacity of the formal sector to create new jobs has been fast declining, while on the other hand the labour force has continued to grow without letup. Many have therefore been forced out of the formal sector to seek livelihood in the informal sector. In effect, the informal sector serves as a refuge of last resort. Although for obvious reasons there are no reliable figures on the size of informal sector employment, the available evidence (patchy, scattered and contradictory as it is) suggests that it is highly significant. For 1991, one estimate is that this sector accounted for 25 per cent of total employment and 62.5 per cent of urban employment in Africa. 84 However, it must be recognised that wages in this sector are lower, benefits are unknown and conditions of work are more difficult than in the formal sector. Therefore, while its importance as an alternative source of livelihood must be appreciated and proper policies designed to support it, there is need to be aware of its limitations as well. In providing employment, for example, it must be viewed not as a substitute for but as a complement to the formal sector.

The dominant intellectual-ideological stance today is condemnation of government intervention in the economy and, correspondingly, advocacy of the free market. Paradoxically, the argument for government intervention itself was at least partly an outgrowth of welfare economics, a branch of conventional economic theory that supported government action to correct for market failures. On top of this, the weakness of the private sector in Africa, an uncritical faith in the possibilities of government and opportunities for political patronage created a situation in which the role of the state in the economy was clearly dominant. This meant the emergence of parastatals, the subjection of economic activities to administrative controls rather than market mechanisms and expansion in government expenditures. As a result, in many African countries public enterprises dominate production and employment in the "modern" sector.

Owing to factors largely of international dimensions as well as due to disillusionment with decades of state-led "development", and largely through the leverage of the international financial institutions, there is now a groundswell of advocacy for economic liberalisation. The merits of such a reconsideration are unfortunately likely to be compromised if, as seems evident, liberalisation is interpreted dogmatically to mean condemnation of government action of all sorts and worship of the market in all circumstances.

Africa has been the subject of extended controversy in this regard, the major protagonists being the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on the one hand, and the Economic Commission for Africa, on the other. The controversy can be traced to at least 1980, when the so-called Berg report emerged with an articulation of the Bank's thinking on African development. There have been several Bank publications since then, and the ECA has articulated its position in the form of the African Alternative to Structural Adjustment Programs for Socio-economic Recovery and Transformation (AAF-SAP). This is not the place to go into a discussion of the debate. However, since the central problem of liberalisation is one of reducing the role of the state and enhancing that of markets, a few words on the relative roles of these two institutions are in order. This is, after all, the fundamental problem of economic policy.

It should be readily admitted that much harm has been done by indiscriminate extension of the role of government in the economy. The performance of public enterprises has for the most part been unsatisfactory; government controls and restrictions on the private sector have been mostly counter-productive; government has moved into activities where it has been operating at a comparative disadvantage; and public activity has been marred by pervasive corruption. Not only did the state expand its own spheres of operation but it also stifled private initiative, with considerable adverse impact on economic and social progress. In view of these considerations, therefore, a reappraisal of the role of the state and a move towards allowing a greater role for the market is a most welcome development.

What is questionable, however, is the presumption that all state activity is harmful and that nothing but good can come from absolute reliance on the market. In the first place, it must be recognised that the state in Africa has indispensable functions to perform, especially in providing economic and social infrastructure and in creating an enabling environment for development. It is worth noting in this connection that the widely acclaimed success stories such as Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore owe a great deal of their success to intelligent but firm government involvement. Their experiences confirm the point that the issue is not one of intervention or non-intervention but of what kind of intervention. As has been noted, "government intervention is most successful when policies flow along with rather than go against market forces".85

Secondly, it must be realised that the private sector operates under very serious constraints. It is limited in size, is subject to real financial limitations, and is unable to point to a long history of management experience.

Thirdly, markets in Africa are highly imperfect and fragmented, so that their effectiveness as signalling devices for resource allocation leaves much to be desired. True, they deserve to be nurtured, but only in realistic terms. It may sound paradoxical, but only an effective state can adequately discharge the task of strengthening markets.

At a macroeconomic level, liberalisation essentially means creating a policy framework that is favourable to economic actors, especially in the private sector. As such, it means freeing the economy from state controls and interventions that have proved counterproductive. Without attempting comprehensiveness, some of the necessary measures may be listed as: greater reliance on the market rather than administrative arrangements in the determination of prices and restricting the state to essential regulatory functions; eliminating cumbersome regulations and procedures for licensing enterprises, customs, and access to credit and foreign exchange; dismantling restrictions on the mobility of goods and labour; discontinuation of special privileges extended to public enterprises; and allowing banks and other financial institutions to be run as autonomous bodies. While all these are indispensable measures, perhaps the accent needs to be put on the creation of a framework of competition between public and private enterprises. In short, to use a phrase that has gained wide currency, it is a matter of creating an enabling environment.

It is at the level of macroeconomic stabilisation and adjustment that the significance of SAPs arises. We are told that between 1980 and 1989, "241 adjustment programmes were put in place by 36 countries in collaboration with the IMF and the World Bank" [UNICEF 1992: 16]. However, at least in Africa, these programs have led to considerable scepticism regarding their efficacy in both economic and social terms. A UNICEF study argues that, on balance, the social consequences of SAPs have been adverse. Some of the outcomes have been declines in household incomes in the urban formal sector; the growth of the informal sector, which was not always an unmixed blessing; a decline in rural incomes less than that in urban areas; bias against small rural producers on account of "tight and more expensive credit, cutbacks in public sector extension services, the withdrawal of subsidies on agricultural inputs, and the deterioration of roads and other infrastructure"; a substantial rise in interest payments as a ratio of total government expenditure; and a disproportionate cut in spending on health, education, economic services, and infrastructure. Thus, "in many of the larger countries, such as Nigeria, Zaire and Zambia, the share of interest payments reached a huge 30 per cent of total government expenditures in 1985-87: an amount two to seven times greater than that allocated for health care and education combined".86

At a lower level, liberalisation also raises the question of how to handle public enterprises. The sorry record of these enterprises in most African countries is public knowledge. Often they are assigned a number of objectives (some not mutually compatible) to achieve; they are given very little management autonomy to do this; and they operate under very serious constraints, including limited access to raw materials and foreign exchange. Although the relative importance of such factors may vary from to country, the poor showing of public enterprises is almost universal.

The options for dealing with them are liquidation, restructuring and privatisation. There are some enterprises that are beyond redemption, in which case liquidation may be the most reasonable choice. More significant, however, are issues of restructuring and privatisation, to which we now turn. Restructuring (or public enterprise reform) is basically concerned with the handling of enterprises that will continue under state ownership. The overriding objective is one of ensuring that they are run efficiently. This requires, in the first place, that their management be given sufficient autonomy to make the major decisions pertaining to the running of the enterprises (including the hiring and firing of labour); that the principal criterion by which they will be judged be profitability (unless the nature of a particular enterprise requires it to serve non-economic goals, in which case these should be made explicit and not be confused with economic goals); that, in competing with private enterprises, those in the state sector not be accorded preferential treatment; and that their internal structure be streamlined to serve the interests of efficiency. Other requirements are that:

sound mechanisms and procedures for the appointment of chief executives and measures for effective human resource management must be introduced and strengthened ...; the financial viability of public enterprises must be enhanced to ensure their contribution to growth and recovery ...; opportunities for technological adaptation and innovation must be fully pursued ...; [and] enterprise operations must be imbued with entrepreneurial culture. 87

These measures are absolutely essential because there is no doubt that regardless of the privatisation trend, public enterprises will continue to play a significant role in the economies of African countries in the future.

Finally, there is the option of privatisation, an issue that has emerged as an important policy question in the last two decades, although its history in Africa is more recent. In simple terms, what privatisation involves is the transfer of public assets to private ownership. It owes its origin to widespread disillusionment with public enterprises and to the prevailing international situation. Since there is often uncritical acceptance of privatisation as a goal in itself, it is important for African countries to be clear on what they intend to achieve through the transfer of public enterprises to the private sector.

The foremost argument for privatisation is that it will lead to greater efficiency. However, even if the record of public enterprises has generally been worse than those of private ones, this is no proof that the latter are inherently more efficient. In fact, the efficiency of private enterprises is predicated on the existence of competition. In the absence of competition, privatisation would merely replace state monopolies by private monopolies, and there would be no evident gain in efficiency or benefits to society. Table 2 Privatisation in Some African Countries

Country	Total no. of Public enterprises (PEs)	No. of PEs to be privatised	No of PEs actually privatised	No. of PEs liquidated or closed down
Cameroon	80	12	-	5
Cote d'Ivoire	113	20	4	15
Guinea	65	43	4	16
Kenya	180	20	-	5
Liberia	23	7	-	-
Madagascar	130	15	-	5
Mali	54	11	2	9
Mauritania	108	10	2	4
Niger	54	24	3	3
Uganda	130	67	-	1
Senegal	150	26	5	14
Sierra Leone	50	19	-	1
Sudan	136	-	7	10
Togo	73	40	12	11
Zaire	138	37	31	3

Source: ECA, Review of Recent Experiences in Public Enterprise Reform and Privatisation in Africa, op. cit., p. 19.

A related argument for privatisation is that it will ease the strain on the government budget by removing the need for paying subsidies to public enterprises and, more generally, by relieving the government of the burden of absorbing the losses of such enterprises.

A further argument for privatisation is that the government, instead of being saddled with the task of running economic enterprises, will be allowed to concentrate its energy and resources on the performance of tasks which it can do best, especially the provision of much needed physical and social infrastructure, as well as the creation of an enabling environment.

Whatever the validity of these arguments and for all the rhetoric about privatisation, not much progress has been made in Africa. True, there have been a number of interesting experiences. In 1992 alone Nigeria, Morocco, Mozambique, Chad, Sudan and Uganda embarked on sales of losing public enterprises, while Morocco and Tunisia continued with campaigns which had started in the mid-1980s. There have also been other, more cautious attempts, notably in Egypt ("which has one of the largest public sectors on the continent"); in Tanzania, where "loss-making public enterprises are to be sold off, although there is debate still as to which of the public enterprises are to be privatised"; and in Ethiopia, where a policy of privatisation has been announced but has yet to take off. 88 Other countries that have experimented with privatisation, with various degrees of success are Ghana, Zambia, Benin, Guinea, Senegal and Kenya. 89 Table 2 summarises progress in privatisation in some African countries.

However, the process is "proving more protracted than expected". In the first place, while governments are unwilling to part with profitable enterprises, buyers are often reluctant to buy losing ones. But even for the profitable ones, it is not always easy to find buyers, given the limited nature of private capital in many African countries and the absence of a developed capital market. In such circumstances, the larger enterprises are less likely to find buyers. In addition,

the question is not merely that of lack of takers but of takers who are acceptable to the Government or whose terms may not be attractive to the Government in terms of valuation and public policy issues of political sovereignty. There is also the question of public policy on popular participation in profit-making business enterprises. Most African Governments would detest the use of privatisation to concentrate enterprise shares and stocks or investments in the hands of a few nationals. Yet normal privatisation, that is, one undertaken strictly on business lines in a free market, would result in the concentration of investment in wealth in the hands of a few capital owners. 90

There are also complex problems of valuation involved, which given the limited "infrastructure of privatisation" (accountants, lawyers, etc.) in most African countries are difficult to resolve. Finally, governments are highly sensitive to the laying off of workers and prices that inevitably follow on the wake of privatisation. For all these reasons, one must concur with the judgement that "wholesale privatisation is unrealistic and has, therefore, not been advocated by any African country".91 It seems that most efforts will concentrate on reforming public enterprises.

As African countries embark on programs of privatisation, they would do well to reflect on the experiences of other countries. One lesson is that the issue should be approached pragmatically, not dogmatically. Second, there is need to avoid too much haste in undertaking the exercise, although this must not be taken as a counsel for inaction. Third, there should be a clear appreciation of the problems involved and avoidance of undue expectations. In fact, as one report points out, "the relatively recent experience of African countries with public enterprise reform and privatisation indicates that privatisation is no more a solution to the problems of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) than the SOEs were a solution to the socio-economic development problems they were created to solve".92 Fourth, privatisation cannot succeed in the absence of a strong political commitment on the part of policy makers. If it is undertaken perfunctorily or merely to please those who control the purse strings, it is bound to fail. Fifth, the strength of the private sector should not be exaggerated. Sixth, the potential adverse human consequences of privatisation, especially price hikes and worker lay-offs, should not be lost sight of. Finally, the entire privatisation exercise should be characterised by transparency and accompanied by extensive public education concerning its objectives, expected results and anticipated problems. Therefore, all the seven "sins of privatisation" identified in HDR93 are highly relevant to Africa.

To recapitulate: liberalisation of the policy environment, restructuring of public enterprises and privatisation are all necessary for African economies to perform better than they have done in the past. However, all of them are beset with formidable problems. They should be approached realistically and without any illusions as to what they can deliver as well as without underestimating their problems and possible adverse consequences.

The greatest virtue of markets is that, as impersonal arbiters between the forces of supply and demand, they lead to efficiency in resource allocation provided they are free. One problem, however, is that they are seldom free, and rendering them so is not an easy task. But markets cannot be blamed for this; the responsibility of making them truly free lies with policies and institutions.

But markets also raise questions of equity. As HDR93 points out, "people enter markets as unequal partners and often leave with unequal rewards, even when markets operate neutrally".93 Herein lies the major challenge of policy to enhance human development: if markets, left to themselves, cannot ensure equity, what can be done to "allow people to participate fully in their operation and to share equitably in their benefits", i.e., to make them people-friendly? For, as HDR93 states, "markets should serve people rather than people serving markets".94

HDR93 also provides a rather exacting list of measures that need to be taken to make markets people-friendly. A quick glance at the list reveals that it is a tall order for African countries. Therefore, it should be taken not as an objective to be attained in the near future but as a checklist for monitoring progress towards the overall objective.

The first set of measures, which fall under the rubric of "preconditions", include investment in people; access to assets; credit and information; adequate infrastructure; the rule of law; no barriers to entry; and a liberal trade regime.

Investing in people is one of the surest ways of increasing their access to markets, a striking lesson that emerges from the East Asian experience. In Africa, despite promising beginnings, serious setbacks have been encountered in human resource development. As noted by the World Bank,

with the current decline in public resources caused by Africa's poor economic performance, social services in many countries have deteriorated as budgets have been cut ... There is evidence also of stagnating or falling primary school enrolment rates; infant mortality rates in some poor countries continue to be very high. 95

And, the study notes, "if the current trends persist, the basis for long-term development will be undermined".96

The other component of the preconditions is access to assets, credit and information. Progress in this regard also leaves much to be desired. In Africa, access to assets essentially means access to land. Although, in general, the continent is not bedevilled by problems of tenancy that prevail in much of Latin America and Asia, still there are significant disparities in land ownership. Especially noteworthy in this regard is that women, who play such a pivotal role in African agriculture, are in many countries denied access to land ownership. Credit has always been a serious problem for African farmers and those operating in the informal sector. The formal financial institutions, because of their forbidding collateral requirements, stiff lending conditions and inaccessibility, do not effectively cater to the needs of the small borrower. And, given a paucity of well-functioning traditional credit institutions, the small borrower is usually left to the tender mercies of loan sharks. Information, too, is highly concentrated, mostly in urban areas, and seldom trickles down to where the farmer and other small producers are. These constituencies are therefore seriously disadvantaged and their access to markets highly constrained.

Another neglected area is infrastructure. In many an African country, the evidence of such neglect is all too obvious: roads that have become unusable due to poor or no maintenance; postal, telephone, electric and water systems that fail as often as they work; ports too inefficient to handle incoming and outgoing freight; buildings allowed to run to waste; etc. Such an accumulated backlog of problems is unlikely to be solved within a short period. Pending its solution, markets will continue to be fragmented and dysfunctional.

Reducing barriers to entry and making the trade regime more liberal are inter-related problems. It is in these areas that many African countries have taken conscious action to improve the situation. But this does not represent more than tentative beginnings. There still exist a wide range of market barriers and restrictions that await dismantling. Progress will depend on the extent of government commitment, which will naturally vary from country to country.

A second set of measures, referred to as "accompanying conditions", includes a stable macroeconomic environment, a comprehensive incentive system, and freedom from arbitrary government controls and regulations. These are measures that are typical components of SAPs, and as noted earlier most African countries have embarked on them at one time or another. Whatever the controversies surrounding such programs are, there is at least no evidence that they have improved the human condition in Africa. Therefore, the extent to which the arrangements they have led to can be referred to as "people-friendly" is highly questionable. Although the measures cannot be faulted in principle, their practical results leave much to be desired.

In the third place are "corrective actions", namely state actions to correct for the undesirable effects of markets. They include protection of competition, consumers, workers, special groups (especially women, children and ethnic minorities), and the environment. African countries have made various degrees of progress in these areas, but much more needs to be done in virtually all of them.

A final component of measures to make markets people-friendly are "social safety nets", which refer to "adequate arrangements to look after the temporary victims of market forces to bring them back into the markets, primarily through human investment, worker retraining and access to credit opportunities as well as more permanent support for groups such as the disabled and the aged".97 The necessity of designing safety nets in conjunction with SAPs is now accepted even by the Bank. In 1987, together with UNDP and the African Development Bank, it launched the Social Dimensions of Adjustment (SDA) program, "which started as an initiative to collect better data on how the poor were being affected by adjustment policies, but ... was rapidly broadened to provide policy advice and some support for taking action to protect vulnerable groups affected by adjustment" [Jolly 1991: 1807]. One noteworthy experiment in this regard is the Program of Action to Mitigate the Social Consequences of Adjustment (PAMSCAD) which has been implemented in Ghana. Therefore, the social consequences of adjustment are real, and the necessity of designing safety nets is compelling. However, one reason the consequences of SAPs have tended to have adverse consequences on the human situation in Africa is that, rhetoric aside, the design of effective safety nets to protect vulnerable groups during adjustment has not been taken seriously. Since these groups constitute sizeable segments of society, failure in protecting them must be taken as a serious setback in promoting human development.

We conclude that whatever measures African countries may have taken to create people-friendly markets, progress in this regard has been halting and unsatisfactory. The issue must therefore continue to claim a significant place in the economic and social agenda of the region.

Governance has been defined as "the exercise of political power to manage a nation's affairs".98 It is obvious that the way a society is governed has significant implications for economic growth and human development. Since economic activities do not take place in a political vacuum, the system of governance is bound to have a positive or negative influence on them.

On the whole, Africa has no tradition of democratic governance. As is well-known, the colonial period was characterised by the suppression of the most basic democratic rights; the colonial powers ruled, and Africans were ruled. With independence form colonial rule, there were high hopes that people would be given the opportunity to exercise some degree of control over how their societies would be governed. This too was not to happen, as a review of post-independence political developments easily confirms. The question of proper governance is therefore very much on the agenda. This is a multi-faceted problem covering all areas that bring the state into contact with the people. But for the purpose of this paper we will concentrate on two questions, that of democratisation and decentralisation.

The major defining characteristic of democracy is that people have an effective say in the political affairs of their country. While the mechanisms for ensuring this are many, some of the essential ones are a voice in choosing the political leadership, a government that is accountable to the people, checks and balances in the political system, and open debate.

The performance of African regimes on the basis of this test has been disappointing on the whole. Most of them have been authoritarian, some going to repugnant extremes. As noted by the World Bank,

Because countervailing power has been lacking, state officials in many countries have served their own interests without fear of being called to account. In self-defence individuals have built personal networks of influence rather than hold the all-powerful state accountable for its systemic failures. In this way politics becomes personalised, and patronage becomes essential to maintain power. The leadership assumes broad discretionary authority and loses its legitimacy. Information is controlled, and voluntary associations are co-opted or disbanded. This environment cannot readily support a dynamic economy. 99

Nor, one might add, would it be propitious for human development. This is because it effectively disenfranchises the people, who are both the creators and the beneficiaries of development. This is because

policies and programmes have too often been framed without consultation with the people who are directly affected by these programmes, and without serious considerations to the perceptions and preferences of the people who are supposed to benefit from them. The result is more often a failure of those policies and programmes because the lack of participation creates apathy and indifference on the part of people. The typical single-party state neither tolerates nor recognises any other organised group within the society apart from the party which has become synonymous with the state. Not only have such policies kept major segments of society out of any meaningful contact with national life, but they have also reinforced the division of society into fragmented small sub-national tribal and ethnic units. 100

Thus, post-independence African politics is replete with military coups and counter-coups, rigged elections where these have taken place at all, absence of the rule of the law, lack of transparency in government operations, corruption on a gigantic scale, and so on. In short, democracy has been conspicuous by its absence.

But recent developments have been more encouraging. In country after country, processes have been unleashed which can legitimately be described as processes of democratisation. Some erstwhile one-party states now parade a multiplicity of parties; elections with credible claims to legitimacy have either been conducted or are in the making; and regimes of long standing have been swept away by elections and peaceful transfers of power have been consummated. Thus, between 1990 and 1992 alone,

about a dozen heads of states were displaced and many of the authoritarian generation of political leaders, were overthrown, often in a dramatic fashion. Significant and far-reaching political changes are currently underway in a number of African countries. A "democracy movement", often manifested in the form of mass protest, national conferences and large-scale public demonstrations, has culminated in multi-party elections in at least six nations. Over 10 countries have adopted new constitutions and have moved to legalise opposition political activities and have pledged, at least on paper, to meet the most exacting standards of governance. 101

And the process has gathered further momentum since then. 102 Thus, to quote an apt statement, "even the most hard-line autocrats have felt the democratic wind on their cheeks".103 It would therefore be unwise to underestimate the significance of these developments. While it is difficult to speculate on what they will ultimately add up to, it seems certain that the African political landscape will not be the same again. "The political clout of these movements is demonstrated by the fact that most African governments have either given way or indicated a willingness to re-examine political structures, especially one-party rule".104

But it would be equally unwise to blow the significance of these developments out of proportion. 105 In the first place, as pointed out earlier, the absence of a democratic tradition in Africa suggests that the shoots of democracy are rather tender and are likely to whither if not carefully nurtured in a sustained manner. Nor should it be lost sight of that democracy means building appropriate institutions (including representative bodies, civic organisations, professional associations, a free press) and a robust civil society. It is therefore a process that requires time and patience. Grasping this point helps avoid the frequently encountered confusion between the substance and the form of democracy. As HDR93 points out, "democracies, to work, need much more than voting booths".106 This is why one should resist the tendency to equate democracy with the existence of many parties or the holding of elections.

One should also be wary of overestimating the extent to which some regimes are willing to submit to the test of popular verdict or to abide by it once it is made clear. The resistance to democratic pressures is, after all, still sufficiently strong. This applies to those in opposition as well, as the Angolan experience unfortunately but clearly demonstrates. And "judging by the political tensions and sporadic violence that have accompanied the democratisation process in countries such as Algeria, Togo and Zaire, it is by now clear the process of political transition may not always proceed in conditions of relative peace".107 It should also be noted that many countries in the region are still engaged in destructive civil wars. Such wars render the political environment highly unstable, a situation that is most unconducive to the introduction of democratic governance.

We conclude, therefore, that although recent developments are promising, there are still formidable obstacles in the way of establishing truly democratic governance in Africa.

The essence of decentralisation is reducing power that is concentrated in one centre and diffusing it. As HDR93 points out, this could be horizontal (dispersing power among institutions at the same level) or vertical, "which is more important [and] allows some of the powers of the central government to be delegated downwards to lower tiers of authority".108 Vertical decentralisation, in turn, can take the form of deconcentration (limited to passing down only administrative discretion), delegation (passing some authority and decision-making powers to local officials), and devolution. The latter is "the strongest form of decentralisation" and "involves granting decision-making powers to local authorities and allowing them to take full responsibility without reference back to central government".109 The extent to which this has been done may be taken as the real litmus test of decentralisation.

Stated simply, the most compelling case for decentralisation is that it brings government closer to the people. The central government, located in the capital city, is usually too distant to respond effectively to the needs and problems of people at the grassroots level. Nor is it easily susceptible to influence by the citizenry, even when it has been elected to power by them. Decentralisation, in contrast, permits people to have some say in public affairs while it provides local governments the opportunity to be tuned to the problems and aspirations of ordinary people.

The overriding considerations here are those of participation and efficiency. Decentralisation, by bringing government closer to the people, will it is hoped allow for greater popular participation in the choice of projects, which would ensure that they are relevant to the lives of the people concerned. Decentralisation also provides the opportunity to cut costs, because it enables people to exercise greater control over expenditures and minimises the danger that money will be squandered on projects of dubious utility. It may also lead to greater revenue mobilisation at the local level through taxation, cost recovery, voluntary contributions and borrowing. By giving an impetus to local entrepreneurship, it may also contribute to greater output and employment generation.

Even though this represents an impressive list of benefits, progress towards decentralisation in most poor countries, especially in Africa, has been slow. To begin with, the colonial heritage was one of highly centralised government because it was the form that was most convenient for colonial administration. But this pattern continued even in the post-colonial era, largely on account of the effort at nation-building, which required a centralised state. The fact that there was very little democracy also reinforced centralist tendencies, and this was further assisted by the urban bias of government expenditure and the nature and type of foreign aid, which was largely concentrated on the central government. Therefore, "in many African countries ... decentralisation efforts have been limited to deconcentration and delegation of responsibilities rather than devolution of power from the centre to the sub-national units and local authorities".110

According to one study111 the cases of Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia are worth reviewing in this regard. In Tanzania, the program of creating ujamaa (familyhood) villages, which started in the 1960s, may be seen as an experiment in devolution to the extent that village and ward development committees as well as local party cells were assigned a central role in the country's planning process. The intention was to empower villages to take initiatives in promoting development, and this did happen to a certain extent. However, the process did not go far enough on account of several factors, including too much interference from the centre and inadequate resources down below. In the end, the program of villagization had to be abandoned because it could not be sustained.

In Nigeria, which has a federal structure of government, decentralisation has been in the nature of a "pendulum process": "periods of decentralisation have been followed by decentralisation exercises which, in turn, are undone by recentralising regimes".112 Thus, significant devolution measures were introduced in 1976 and the 1978 constitution conferred wide-ranging powers on local governments. In spite of notable progress subsequent to the reforms, "post-reform local government performance in Nigeria remained far from adequate to meet the vast and rapidly growing needs of rural and urban constituents", some of the reasons being undue interference from above, inadequate resources, and little constituent participation in planning and decision-making. 113

In Ethiopia, the 1974 revolution conferred some powers on peasant associations and neighbourhood councils (kebeles) in the towns. Although these bodies enjoyed some degree of autonomy in the early years, it was not long before they were reduced to instruments of control from the centre. By the time the military regime had consolidated its power, Ethiopia was run as a tightly centralised state. However, the period since the fall of that regime has witnessed a determination to create a system of autonomous regional governments. Significant legislation has been enacted delineating the responsibilities of the centre and the regions and providing for a system of fiscal decentralisation. 114 Regional administrations have been created and most of them are in the process of experimenting with their new powers. However, it is too early to pass judgement on the new system.

On the basis of his review of these three country experiences, Koehn concludes that "the most compelling finding from these cases is that decentralisation has not been pursued far enough".115 Although one should take exception to this statement in regard to the current Ethiopian situation (where one might plausibly argue the contrary), the verdict is generally correct as far as most of Africa is concerned.

But efforts at decentralisation seem likely to continue as part of the recent wave of democratisation. This is largely on account of disappointment with the experience of centralisation and the growing demands for greater popular participation. Promising as these beginnings are, however, they face very serious constraints, essentially because of the strong link between democratisation and decentralisation. These two are, in fact, different facets of the same process. For this reason, progress in decentralisation will be largely dependent on progress in democratisation. It is highly unlikely for authoritarian regimes to be favourably disposed towards decentralisation.

Two final notes need to be made by way of qualifying the arguments for decentralisation. First, there is nothing automatic about the benefits expected from it; the best that can be said is that their materialisation would be more certain than in situations of centralisation. Second, it is possible for the beneficiaries of decentralisation to be local elites rather than ordinary people. The best way of safeguarding against this is by making governance as participatory as possible.

The essence of participation is that "people have a constant access to decision-making and power" in all spheres of life economic, social and political. 116 Underlying the concept is the fundamental tenet that there cannot be human development in the real sense if people are not empowered to control their lives; in the absence of such empowerment, people's lives are controlled from above, emptying the whole concept of human development of its fundamental essence.

People can participate in decision-making either as individuals or in groups, and there is a wide range of modalities in which such participation may be effected. Two modalities that deserve special attention are people's organisations (POs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The distinction between these two is not particularly neat and it is often overdrawn. HDR93 defines POs as "democratic organisations that represent the interests of their members and are accountable to them"117 and they include organisations such as co-operatives, trade unions, welfare societies, women's groups, etc. Although they are often referred to as grassroots organisations, they could expand to establish regional and country-wide networks. One author has defined them as "a process of summing up the experience of people's struggles; vehicles for defending their interests; based on the needs and wants of the people as perceived by them and sharpened in the course of fighting for those needs and wants".118

NGOs are perhaps even less easy to define; their essence, however, is that they are organisations that operate outside the sphere of the state. Their concerns are wide-ranging, covering a multitude of issues from food relief to human rights. Organisationally too they represent a great diversity, from small ones to those spawning whole regions and countries.

Both POs and NGOs have moved to the centre of the development debate in recent years, largely on account of the rethinking that has been triggered by the consequences of the overextended state. In Africa, development thinking for most of the post-independence period was permeated by uncritical espousal of the virtues of state involvement in promoting social and economic progress. Such thinking left little space for popular initiatives, in effect "crowding out" the people and their own organisations from the development scene.

However, recent swings in the intellectual-ideological pendulum have directed greater attention to non-governmental actors, including POs and NGOs. The former have a fairly long history in Africa, a continent which has "rich traditions of community and group welfare":

This is reflected in the widespread practice of sharing among people, with its emphasis on grassroots initiatives and community-based projects. Such co-operation tends to be spontaneous and informal. Community-based development projects provide an avenue for mobilising "community savings" in cash or labour for a range of local activities. 119

POs take a wide variety of forms. 120 One common form, especially in rural areas, is represented by mutual support networks, based on sharing labour, assets, services and information, and intended as a means through which members can help each other. They are informal and their membership is generally small. Then there are welfare or voluntary associations, examples being burial societies, welfare clubs, religious societies and the like. These too are informal organisations and their objectives include social welfare, solidarity and identity. Third, there are savings and credit associations, whose functions are essentially those of resource mobilisation. They play an important role in view of the limited access of poor people to formal credit. But it is not only the poor that benefit from such organisations, as suggested by the fact that the funds that they mobilise are sometimes of substantial magnitudes. Fourth, there are self-help organisations, which are often multi-purpose community development organisations. Two prominent examples, showing both the strengths and weaknesses of such organisations are the Harambee movement in Kenya and the Naam movement in Burkina Faso. The former is an example of a movement that was initially strongly assisted by the government while the latter represents independent popular initiative. Consequently, the former seems to have lost a great deal of its autonomy while the latter is often cited as a success story. These represent a by no means exhaustive list of POs that have either traditionally existed in most African societies or have emerged during the course of "modernisation".

The strength of such organisations emanates from their closeness to the people and flexibility. It is because of these factors that they have showed a resilience that is sorely missing in the state sector. As observed by one student of the problem,

The wide variety of peasant organisations, formal and informal, found throughout Africa bears testimony to the vigour and enterprising spirit of rural society in the continent. Despite the heavy hand of the state, which has sought to smother all forms of popular engagement, cultivators, pastoralists, agricultural labourers and rural craftsmen continue to re-create the conditions of their existence through forms of associative activities and relationships... The crisis that is all too often played up, namely the paralysis of the state, is not replicated at the grass roots level the people here may have become poorer and have less access to needed services, but their instincts for survival and solidarity have become much sharper. 121

One should not, however, be oblivious of the serious constraints within which POs have to operate. In some cases, the constraints are imposed from without and take the forms of direct and indirect government control. Some of the constraints, on the other hand, stem from the very character of POs, including lack of resources; limited democracy within the organisations; exclusivity along ethnic, religious or other lines; and limited access to information. Therefore, while recognising their underlying strengths, one should also bear in mind their limitations. Only such a critical perspective will prevent the promotion of "an untested idea only because popular participation is the new fad and the darling of everyone conservative, liberal and radical alike".122

NGOs have a much shorter history than POs, especially relative to those in other parts of the world. However, they have expanded so profusely that it is estimated that there may be about 10,000 of them throughout the continent, engaged in a wide variety of activities. 123 Perhaps the major forte of NGOs is that they are closer to the people than governments. On account of this, they have access to information on people's living conditions, awareness of their needs and insights into their thinking and aspirations. For this reason also, they can serve as effective agents of popular mobilisation. NGOs are also credited with cost-effectiveness because they do not have sprawling bureaucracies, but this is not always or necessarily true. Other advantages claimed for them are an ability to "experiment with non-conventional ideas and practices, ... strategic perspective developed from faster learning and ... ability to articulate rural reality", in addition to "due respect for indigenous knowledge and environmental consciousness".124 Some of these claims are undoubtedly overstated, but there is no doubt that NGOs have demonstrated a comparative advantage in certain activities.

Still, they have considerable limitations. African NGOs in particular are overly dependent on foreign NGOs for their financial sustenance, such dependence often leading to uncritical acceptance of the agenda of their benefactors. Second, many NGO-supported projects lack sustainability, it being common for projects to collapse as soon as NGO support is withdrawn. Third, the charge has been made that NGOs benefit local elites more than the ordinary people they are intended to serve.

Local elites ... are grabbing the opportunity to spawn into existence a myriad of NGOs, the primary purpose of which in practice is to attract foreign funds. Some state or state-connected bureaucrats overnight patronise or place themselves at the head of NGOs. These have been aptly described as GONGOs (Government Organised NGOs). Then there are foreign NGOs or FONGOs providing plush jobs to both home and host country elites. And so many local NGOs (LONGOs) are basically foreign-funded or FFUNGOs.

The NGO initiative remains an elite enterprise; it has little or no constituency in, and accountability to, the working people. The latter are at best grateful recipients of the benefaction, their life destinies still controlled from elsewhere. Such NGOs add little to building or re-building the organisational capacity of the working people. Organisational building itself from the bottom is an indispensable democratic exercise so necessary for democratic struggles. The NGOs are not an adequate response to that urgent necessity so far as the working people are concerned. 125

Although this criticism is no doubt on the harsh side, it nevertheless pinpoints a fundamental weakness of NGOs. They have also been faulted for lack of programmatic focus, limited management capability, lack of co-ordination and lack of reflective capacity.

What this listing of the strengths and limitations of NGOs suggests is that neither uncritical praise nor wholesale condemnation is appropriate. They do have an important role to play, and no strategy for African development can afford to exclude them. At the same time, there should be clarity on what they cannot do. In particular, they cannot substitute for the state. Whatever its limitations, the state has important functions to perform. In spite of tensions between governments and NGOs, a proper perspective would require exploiting their respective comparative advantages to the full. This would be achieved not by regarding them as adversaries but as partners in a common enterprise.
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67. World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, op. cit., p. 136.

69. ILO/JASPA, The Informal Sector in Africa: Synthesis and Country Summaries, Addis Ababa, 1984.

71. See Sadig Rasheed, "The Informal Sector: What Role in Africa's Development and Transformation", in Development's Last Frontier: What Prospects? Four Essays in African Development, op. cit., pp. 116-144.

72. ILO/JASPA, The Informal Sector in Africa: Synthesis and Country Summaries, op. cit., p. 48.

73. See ECA, Measures for the Stimulation, Development and Promotion of Indigenous Entrepreneurial Capacity in Africa, Addis Ababa, 1992.

75. ECA, Strategic Agenda for Development Management in Africa in the 1990s, op. cit.

76. ILO/JASPA, Report on the African Employment Report 1992, Addis Ababa, 1993, p. 2.

85. ECA, Strategic Agenda for Development Management in Africa in the 1990s, op. cit.

87. ECA, Strategic Agenda for Development Management in Africa in the 1990s, op. cit., pp. 10-11.

88. See Ibid and also Eshetu Chole, Privatization and Deregulation in Ethiopian Industry: Problems, Prospects and Impact on the Economy, Paper presented to the Second Annual Conference on the Ethiopian Economy, Department of Economics, Addis Ababa University, Debre Zeit, Ethiopia, October 29-November 1, 1992.

89. ECA, Review of Recent Experiences in Public Enterprise Reform and Privatization in Africa, Addis Ababa, 1991.

95. World Bank, Sub-saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, op. cit., p. 64

98. World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, op. cit., p. 60

100. Sadig Rasheed and Getachew Demeke, Democracy, Popular Participation and Good Governance: The Role of People's Organizations and Non-Governmental Agencies, paper presented at the Regional Conference on Development Management in Africa: Thirty Years of Experience, Emerging Challenges and Future Priorities, 8-12 March 1993, Addis Ababa, 1993, p. 3.

102. See Sadig Rasheed, "The Democratization Process and Popular Participation in Africa: Emerging Realities and the Challenges Ahead", Development and Change, Forthcoming.

103. UNICEF, Africa's Recovery in the 1990s: From Stagnation and Adjustment to Human Development, op. cit., p. 53.

105. See Sadig Rasheed, "The Democratization Process and Popular Participation in Africa: Emerging Realities and the Challenges Ahead", op. cit.

110. ECA, Strategic Agenda for Development Management in Africa in the 1990s, op. cit., p. 23.

111. Peter Koehn, "Decentralization for Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Constraints" in Sadig Rasheed and David Luke (eds.) Development Management in Africa: Towards Dynamism Empowerment and Entrepreneurship, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994.

114. Eshetu Cole, Opening Pandora's Box: Preliminary Notes on Fiscal Decentralization in Contemporary Ethiopia, paper presented at the Seminar on Regional Development Problems in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, January 1993.

115. Peter Koehn, "Decentralization for Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Constraints", op. cit.

118. Issa Shivji, "The POs and the NGOs: Reflections on the Place of the Working People in the Battle for Democracy", CODESRIA Bulletin, 1990, p. 10.

119. World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, op. cit., pp. 168-169.

120. Dessalegn Rahmato, "Peasant Organizations in Africa: Constraints and Potentials", CODESRIA Working Papers, 1/91, Dakar, 1991.

123. Costantinos Berhe, The Contribution of African Indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations to African Development in the 1990s, mimeo, ECA, Addis Ababa, 1992, p. 5.