Business, Politics, and the State in Africa: Challenging the Orthodoxies on Growth and Transformation
Author(s): Doctor Tim Kelsall (Author)
Publisher: Zed Books
Publication Date: 10 Jan. 2013
Language: English
Print length: 200 pages
ISBN-10: 178032331X
ISBN-13: 9781780323312
Book Description
In recent years Africa appears to have turned a corner economically. It is posting increased growth rates and is no longer the world’s slowest growing region. Commentators are beginning to ask whether emerging from Africa is a new generation of ‘lion’ economies to challenge the East Asian ‘tigers’? This book goes behind the headlines to examine the conditions necessary not just for growth in Africa but for a wider business and economic transformation. Contrary to neoliberal economics, it argues that governments can play an important role in this through selective interventions to correct market failures, and, controversially, that neo-patrimonial governance need not be an obstacle to improved business and economic conditions.
Drawing on a variety of timely case studies – including Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ghana – this provocative book provides a radical new theory of the political and institutional conditions required for pro-poor growth in Africa.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Tim Kelsall has written a seminal book that identifies the management of rents as the central factor determining the economic performance of African countries. Business, Politics and the State in Africa advances the debate on governance and development into a new and more productive field, and is sure to stand as a key text for the next decade. –Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation
Revealing the evolution of Ghana’s, Tanzania’s, Ethiopia’s and Rwanda’s development policy and performance, the empirically-grounded narratives laid out in this book constitute a bracing antidote to the intellectual and ethical complacence behind the mainstream championing of good governance” and a “level-playing-field” business environment as ways forward for development. The authors’ findings and conclusions are sure to be profoundly discomfiting for practitioners – in ways which contribute to, and hopefully will help, spur the new thinking which is urgently needed.” –Brian Levy, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and University of Cape Town, and formerly a World Bank governance adviser
About the Author
Tim Kelsall is an associate of the Africa, Power and Politics Programme (www.institutions-africa.org) and is a resource person for the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (www.pasgr.org). He is the author of Contentious Politics, Local Governance, and the Self: A Tanzanian case study (2005), and Culture under Cross-Examination: International Justice and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2009) as well as articles published in journals including Africa, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Human Rights Quarterly, the Review of International Studies and Development Policy Review.
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