Public Procurement Reform and Governance in Africa

373 Pages·2016·4.7 MB·English

by  S.N. Nyeck (eds.)

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN
POLITICAL ECONOMY
PUBLIC PROCUREMENT
REFORM AND GOVERNANCE
IN AFRICA
EDITED BY
S.N. NYECK
Contemporary African Political Economy
Series Editor
Eunice   N. Sahle
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
USA
Bangor ,   United Kingdom
Contemporary African Political Economy (CAPE) publishes social science
research that examines the intersection of political, social, and economic
processes in contemporary Africa. The series is distinguished especially by
its focus on the spatial, gendered, and cultural dimensions of these pro-
cesses, as well as its emphasis on promoting empirically situated research.
As consultancy-driven work has emerged in the last two decades as the
dominant model of knowledge production about African politics and
economy, CAPE offers an alternate intellectual space for scholarship that
challenges theoretical and empirical orthodoxies and locates political and
economic processes within their structural, historical, global, and local
contexts. As an interdisciplinary series, CAPE broadens the fi eld of tra-
ditional political economy by welcoming contributions from the fi elds of
Anthropology, Development Studies, Geography, Health, Law, Political
Science, Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies. The Series Editor
and Advisory Board particularly invite submissions focusing on the follow-
ing thematic areas: urban processes; democracy and citizenship; agrarian
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immigration and African diaspora formations; natural resources, extrac-
tive industries, and global economy; media and socio-political processes;
development and globalization; and confl ict, displacement, and refugees.
Advisory   Board
Bertha O. Koda , University of Dar es Salaam , Tanzania
Brij   Maharaj , University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa , Th andika
Mkandawire , London School of Economics and Political Science , UK
James   Murombedzi , Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa ,
Senegal
John   Pickles , the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , USA
Wisdom   J. Tettey , University of British Columbia , Canada
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14915
S.N. Nyeck
Editor
Public Procurement
Reform and
Governance in Africa
Editor
S.N. Nyeck
Clarkson University
Potsdam , New York, USA
Contemporary African Political Economy
ISBN 978-1-137-52136-1 ISBN 978-1-137-52137-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52137-8
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F
OREWORD
When I fi rst began to study African politics some 40 odd years ago, I
was struck by the intersection between tradition and modernity. Even as
African societies were being modernized and rapidly transformed, tradi-
tional values and institutions continued to have a great deal of relevance
and impact. Colonial administrations had given way to independent
African-led governments with a mandate for rapid modernization in all
aspects of life. At the same time, these new governments lacked the capac-
ity and the available resources to fulfi ll this task. They had to continue
to rely on the munifi cence of their former colonizers and on loans and
grants from private sources to provide them with the rents needed to
fulfi ll the most basic functions of governance. As a consequence, govern-
ing elites found themselves “caught between a rock and a hard place.”
In the words of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, “In order
to run, we fi rst had to walk.” They wanted to preside over developmen-
tal states, countries capable of self-sustaining development that were free
of the vestiges of European domination, and institutions or states that
were carbon copies of those that characterized the West. Yet, as eminent
African scholars like Claude Ake and Thandika Mkandawire have shown,
even after the formal end of European colonialism, African states were
unable to set their own development agendas. They remained extremely
dependent on Western capital and expertise as well as on political and
economic strategies d ictated by foreign agents. Nowhere was this more
apparent than in the involvement of African governments in the process
of public procurement.
v
vi FOREWORD
S.N. Nyeck, for as long as I have known her, has been intrigued by two
burning sets of questions: (1) “In their interactions with the European
colonialists, were African elites and African people in general mere pawns,
with no agency, simply available to be manipulated by those who sought
to dominate and exploit them? Or, did Africans consistently attempt to
assert their own human agency?” (2) “In the post-independence era, why
have African societies been unable to develop institutions that enable them
to take full advantage of their material wealth and human capital to spread
the greatest good to the greatest number among them on a predictable
and sustained basis? And, what are the keys to prosperity in independent
Africa?”
In an effort to answer the fi rst set of questions, S.N. Nyeck produced a
fi rst rate Ph.D. dissertation that allowed her to creatively unpack the com-
plex interaction between the colonial powers and the African people they
exploited. She was able to clearly demonstrate signifi cant and effective
African agency through a political–historical analysis of procurement prac-
tices of African elites during the colonial era in their dealings with foreign
public and private entities. What remained to be addressed, however, was
an understanding of the prospects and pitfalls of development associated
with underdevelopment in the post-colonial period, particularly as this
relates to the issue of public procurement. This is perhaps t he most impor-
tant aspect of development and underdevelopment in Africa today. Yet it
has escaped the attention of most students of African political economy.
The present volume represents a major breakthrough in this regard. What
is also remarkable about this important book is the fact that its contribu-
tors represent an eclectic array of intellectuals from not only the social
sciences (i.e., political science, public administration, political economy)
but also from fi elds such as urban and regional planning, policy analy-
sis, business, and the legal profession. This volume’s interdisciplinarity/
multidisciplinarity seems most appropriate for understanding the complex
nature of public procurement policy in contemporary Africa.
In most African countries, public procurement accounts for a high
proportion—often between 30 and 70 %—of total government expendi-
tures. Despite being so heavily involved in the procurement process, most
African states do not presently have well-functioning public procurement
systems. At independence, they generally lacked well-established public
procurement foundations and simply relied on the institutions serving this
or similar functions that existed under the colonial regime. They did not
possess suffi cient professional knowledge and expertise in the purchasing
FOREWORD vii
and contracting functions at the national or subnational levels, nor did they
possess rules, regulations, and laws that made it imperative that governing
elites, supported by rationally based bureaucratic institutions, adhere to
the rule of law and avoid getting into the habits of petty and grand corrup-
tion. To go along with this bad governance, a tendency toward predation
in many places set in. As governing elites were not held accountable by an
electorate, civil society, or constitutional imperatives, they often operated
with impunity.
In the past two decades and a half, there has emerged throughout the
developing world a growing interest in public procurement reform. In this
book, S.N. Nyeck and her colleagues take note of this trend and critically
analyze the current state of public procurement reform in Africa. They
not only note some major shortcomings that still exist such as corruption
and mismanagement but also highlight some signifi cant progress that is
being made. For example, new laws curbing the discretionary powers of
what are cynically referred to in society at large as “imperial presidents”;
and enhanced monitoring of political and economic actors by African leg-
islatures and judiciaries as well as by an increasingly attentive and active
civil society. African civil society has been emboldened as never before as
a result of rising levels of formal education and the widespread availability
of information on the internet. New modes of communication energize
civil society via social media.
It is clear that public procurement policy reform in Africa is still very
much a “work in progress” and that “one size” does not fi t all. Most
countries still need to fi nd ways of harmonizing emerging national pro-
curement standards with the practice of procurement policy at the sub-
national level. In addition, central and local authorities need to become
much more effective at enforcing rules and regulations, and more profes-
sional administrators need to be trained and steeped in the habits of best
practices in the execution of their responsibilities.
This book is grounded in a clear understanding of the objectives of
the procurement reform movement in Africa today. Among the outcomes
being pursued are the basic features of good governance: effi ciency, effec-
tiveness, accountability, transparency, a reduction in public corruption,
and an adherence to the rule of law. Good governance is promoted by
the efforts on the part of the state and the private sector to train and
utilize a professional cadre of staff that understand and judiciously apply
the e ssential features of a well-managed and well-functioning public pro-
curement system. The contributors to this volume repeatedly emphasize
viii FOREWORD
the critical importance of credible commitments for needed procurement
policy reforms at the highest political levels.
Embedded throughout the book, particularly in the contributions by
S.N. Nyeck herself, is the question of whether democracy and freedom
should be seen as public goods that must be protected at all cost by the
state, particularly as this relates to public procurement policies in the rap-
idly changing politico-economic contexts of African societies. This chang-
ing context has revealed yet another challenge to the state in its pursuit of
freedom and democracy—outsourcing.
Outsourcing is viewed by its proponents as a way to provide public
goods through contracting with entities in the private sector. Recent pro-
curement reformers have argued for the introduction of innovative fi nanc-
ing schemes including outsourcing and public–private partnerships as new
tools of governance. Yet, there is scant evidence that this has signifi cant
benefi cial results in alleviating social inequalities and poverty. Some critics
argue that outsourcing in fact undermines the pursuit of good governance
in that it opens the way for corruption and the continued lack of transpar-
ency and accountability at the highest levels of authority. This is an issue
that is grappled with in several of the pieces in this volume, and it is likely
to grow in importance in the near future.
Edmond J. Keller
Research Professor, University of California-Los Angeles
Author, Identity, Citizenship and Political Confl ict in Africa (2014)
Los Angeles, CA
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
S. N. Nyeck
Part I P rocurement and Governance: Historical Precedents
and Theoretical Refl ections 2 9
2 The Implicit Dimensions of Public Procurement
Contracts: African History and Debates 3 1
S. N. Nyeck
3 Why Do Some African Countries Negotiate Unfair Natural
Resource Contracts? 5 1
Chrysantus Ayangafac , Dassa Bulcha , and Sehen Bekele
Part II Public Procurement and Institutional Transformation 75
4 Procurement Policy Subversion in Contracts Between South
African Retailers and Suppliers 7 7
Marlese von Broembsen
ix