A Review of the Achievements and Policy Lessons of Public Management Reform in Five Anglophone African Countries

Abstract

This paper reviewed the experiences of five English speaking African countries in implementing public management reforms during the 1980s and 1990s. The paper focuses specifically on: (a) the underlying reasons for the adoption of the reforms; (b) the drivers of the actual implementation of the reforms; (c) their achievements and pitfalls; and (d) the general lessons that emerged from the reform experiences. The study adopted a systematic review approach, which involved an identification of key terms, screening and reviewing of extant relevant literature, and conducting comprehensive document searches. Screening the relevant documents for the study was based on its relevance to the study objective(s). The study finds that the issue of quality service delivery or social provisioning has only become a major focus of reforms in recent years. Also, the study revealed that it is difficult to design, complex to implement and even more difficult to sustain a new public management reform that guarantees the right outcomes and impact on service delivery in the long run. Capacity and experience in these areas are awfully lacking in the public services of the various countries. While strong, broad-based and sustained support, especially by both political and technocratic leaders are critical to the successful design and implementation of public management reforms, they are lacking in most of the countries. Also, weak or no incentives undermine ownership and commitment to reform by public servants. Persistence of strong vested interests against most drastic changes inherent in PSR is constraining reform success. Even so, there are promising results both in the design and implementation of reforms in the five countries.

Keywords: Public Management, Implementation, Anglophone Africa, Policy Lessons