The Role of the Private Sector in the Development of Sub-Sahara Africa: Why Governance Matters

Abstract

In contemporary global society, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains one of the least developed regions of the world due to a lack of sufficient infrastructure developments that can advance socioeconomic development in the region. Using three political economy frameworks (the five lenses framework, the problem-driven framework and Levy’s good-fit alternative framework), this study investigates the extent to which contrasting qualities of governance undermine or support the completion of infrastructure development initiatives through public and private collaborations developed via public-private partnerships (PPPs) and governance reforms/practices using the principles of New Public Management (NPM). To integrate the connections made, this study comprises three papers. The first paper contrasts governance practices and infrastructure developments using PPPs in Nigeria’s power and telecommunication sectors. Five success factors were identified in the telecommunication sector due to effective New Public Governance (NPG) approaches. The paper argues that the success factor in the telecommunication sector cannot be successfully transposed to the power sector because the power sector significantly undermines the effects of market forces due to ineffective New Public Management (NPM) approaches and multiple government agencies making governance cumbersome. The second paper presents findings on the views of private-sector financial agents using Ecobank executives to highlight governance factors that inform their decision-making that it then analyses using the political economy frameworks. The paper argues that, to reduce financiers’ concerns around participation due to perceived risks, there is need to prioritize governance reforms that strengthen both checks-and-balances within institutions and core public management systems. Such reforms, it is argued, ought to secure sustainable private-sector financing. The paper identifies two independent countries in SSA that are leading the way in governance in two different but meaningful ways: Rwanda, from the perspective of a dominant political leadership with perceived good governance; and Ivory Coast, with its supportive underlying institutional structure. The final paper highlights the quality of governance observed in Ivory Coast’s power sector that has facilitated positive outcomes for decades using PPPs. The study attributed the success of PPPs in the Ivory Coast power sector to the ‘French factor’, given the stronger influence of France in Ivory Coast than other French colonies in West Africa. Nevertheless, the study reveals that the reforms, underpinned by New Public Governance (NPG), have facilitated an improved governance framework, favorable economic environment and adequate government support for private-sector investors. In addition, political will in the form of an established institutional framework is helping the country accelerate the development of its power infrastructure through PPPs. Informed by this analysis, this paper determines that governance practices significantly affect PPP outcomes in SSA. The three papers of the thesis provide a basis for analytical comparison of how PPPs have been operationalized in SSA by showing the linkage between governance reforms and infrastructure development outcomes using PPPs. This study further explained the positive outcomes in both Nigeria’s telecom sector and Ivory Coast’s power sector despite contextual differences in governance approaches, and how much good governance has effectively attracted private-sector financial investment and participation in PPPs across multiple countries in SSA.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Pamela Stapleton (Supervisor) & Anne Stafford (Supervisor)