Department of Political Science

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The State Bureaucracies and Development in Africa:Interrogating the Link
(Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020-03) Quadri, M.; Amaechi, V.
The recurring failure of developmental policies in many African states has made the state and the role of its bureaucracy central to development discourse. A majority of Africa public services have proved to be ineffective at implementing socio-economic development objectives. The necessity for reforms in public services in many African countries was borne out of the persistent failure of their policies manifested in the impoverishment and underdevelopment of their citizenries. Many scholars have located the problem as an “implementation challenge” and thereby making the public service culpable of the policy failure. This chapter premises its arguments on the perception that the political and social environments of African public services should form the basis for understanding why African bureaucracies have performed below expectations. We argued that African public services cannot be detached from the context that produced them. Seeking a better explanation of African public services ineptitude, therefore, requires an understanding of this context and its impact on their mode of operation and performance. Consequently, the paper recommends that these realities should be taken into consideration when future reforms are being proposed.