Working Paper 81 - Re-Orienting Public Management in Africa: Selected Issues and Some Country Experiences

The objective of this paper is to examine some aspects of the efforts aimed at re-orienting public management in Africa since the early 1990s. The paper begins with a review of the background to the re-orientation exercise: the decline of the public administration systems in a majority of countries that was accompanied, in some cases, with the collapse of the state. In the second chapter, some selected issues in re-orienting public management are examined. One of the selected issues, the politics and administration nexus, which is at the heart of the conduct of government business, is further examined in depth in the third chapter. The fourth chapter is devoted to specific country experiences of good and bad practices, including attention to key lessons from each case. The fifth and final chapter contain first a brief reflection on how countries can achieve better and sustainable public management reform results, and second, some thoughts on the desirability of introducing and implementing an “African administrative space” within the framework of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD).