This article argues that a shift towards issues of poverty is a welcome antidote to policy-making that had expunged poverty from the central agenda to focus on stabilization, debt management and static allocative efficiency. Unfortunately, in correcting a narrow policy agenda the new focus...

Social policy is today receiving greater attention in the field of development studies. Much emphasis is placed on the important issues of reproduction, redistribution and social protection. However, in the context of development, one must add to these concerns the vital issue of production....

The paper argues that, if for many years financial policy was aimed at addressing issues central to development and nation-building, in more recent years it has become tethered to the objectives of stabilization and debt repayment. Following a review of the African experience with financial...

During the last two decades the idea that neopatrimonialism is central to unravelling the facts behind Africa’s poor economic performance has been advanced by what this study will refer to as the “Neopatrimonialism School”. This paper will argue that while providing descriptions of the...

One commonly observed phenomena about taxation in Africa are regional differences and the fact that southern African countries have higher levels of shares of taxation in GDP. This article argues that the major source of differences in ‘tax effort’ is the colonial histories of various...

During much of the 1980s and 90s, a literature emerged suggesting that "developmental states" were impossible in Africa. The arguments given ranged from cultural ones about the pervasive nature of clientalism to structural ones on the dependence of African economies or the atypical levels of...