Public Procurement Reforms in Africa

This important new book is a model study of how to reform public policymaking in developing countries. Most reform efforts spend too little time on engineering the micro-institutional details necessary to give the relevant parties incentives to implement the reform. Focusing on public procurement in Sub-Saharan Africa, the authors construct the institutional details necessary for successful reform. Barry Weingast, Stanford University This important book deftly analyzes African public procurement, where weak public institutions, including ineffectual enforcement and corruption, have defeated the aims and ambitions of countless aid projects. The books novel approach fills a major gap in our understanding of this thorny problem, and draw actionable insights by comparing the few successful and many failed reforms. Mary M. Shirley, President, Ronald Coase Institute In identifying the tax system as the intestines of the state, Joseph Schumpeter seriously neglected the other side of the government budget. Building an effective state requires not just resources, but the ability to spend those resources in the interests of society. This book is a seminal study of what it takes to do that in Africa. An essential for anyone trying to understand how to build modern states James A. Robinson, Harvard University Public Procurement Reform in Africa is an ambitious study that provides a vast improvement to the literature on the effects of political and legal reform. Using original data and in-depth case analyses, the authors are able to demonstrate when exogenously-imposed and endogenously-driven institutional and ideological reforms will effect political outcomes, such as levels of corruption. Mathew D. McCubbins, Duke University This book delivers a big and welcome surprise: public procurement offers transcendental lessons in the modalities and difficulties of state-building. Using a new dataset on public procurement systems in sub-Saharan Africa, the book carries important messages for procurement scholars and practitioners, for the development community, and for state-builders. Philip Keefer, The World Bank The literature on public procurement reform in Africa is very limited and mainly examines the topic from a legal perspective. In analysing these reforms in sub-Saharan Africa from an institutional perspective, this book is highly significant in filling a gap in the literature. It will surely be successful in pushing the institutional issues to a more prominent place on the agenda of economists, social scientists and policymakers. Sue Arrowsmith, University of Nottingham Public Procurement Reforms in Africa thoroughly grapples with the complex challenges of improving public financial management, and in so doing, the authors contribute to a discourse which is critical to Africa's economic transformation. Kingsley Y. Amoako, President, African Center for Economic Transformation. This book is a must read for those interested in public procurement systems and their reforms in Africa and elsewhere. Those familiar with the New Institutional Economics will recognize this book as an ambitious and informative application of the NIE framework. New comers to the NIE will likewise be impressed by the value added that accrues thereto. Oliver E. Williamson, Nobel Prize in Economics This study is a major step forward in understanding the way institutions work in different settings. Douglass C. North, Nobel Prize in Economics