A Longitudinal Study of the Size, Cost and Administrative Reform of the African Civil Service

This paper summarizes some of the results of a longitudinal and comparative study of the size, cost, and administrative reform of the civil services of ten African countries. Using a participative approach, and drawing on the local experiences from each participating country, the results show significant increases in both size and cost for most of the 1970-1990period studied. Size factors such as number of ministries, scope, size of the cabinet and executive branch, number of new programs were found to be more important for cost containment than simple head counts. Although at the time of the study only a few countries had embarked on extensive reforms, early results indicated that most counters are experiencing difficulties getting started, maintaining momentum, sustaining and institutionaslizing the various civil service administrative reforms.