Institutions and service delivery in a developmental State

The emergence of developmental States in Africa
Out of the failed experiences of the structural adjustment programme of the 1980s and 1990s emerged a group of African leaders determined to turn around the widely held view that Africa was socially and economically a hopeless continent. That small but effective group of new leaders tookradical steps that often put them at odds with the domineering neoclassical concept of development. They were convinced that free market forces alone would not lead to economic transformation, as they were purported to do under the programme, but that the State must play a central role in resource allocation and the coordination of crucial economic activities. Their general view was that the existing neoliberal approach to development no longer offered a viable solution to the continued social and economic decline of the continent. Their search for a more viable and robust model that could lift the majority of the continent’s population out of poverty in the shortest possible time led them to take a closer look at the East Asian experience.