This volume presents an account of how people in sub-Saharan Africa have fared under changing life circumstances of the past centuries until the present. By introducing the geography of the region it traces a time line of different historical periods that have shaped livelihoods of ordinary...

Poor public management defined by corruption and lack of prudence in public life continues to hold Nigeria hostage and makes good governance difficult. Since the 1980s government has been using many methods including the processes of privatization and commercialization as means of re-engineering...

Good governance is epitomized by predictable, open and enlightened policy making, i.e. transparent processes, a bureaucracy imbued with professional ethos, an executive arm of government accountable for its actions, and a strong civil society participating in public affairs and behaving under...

The steadily growing disappointment of most peoples of the world today with the types of democratic governance and the frustration with the perceived general inefficiency of national democratic arrangements to solve the problems of weak governance has in recent years brought the matter of...