Advantages Of Privatization In Sub-Saharan Africa

Modern African states have various problems ranging from corruption, to armed conflict, to stunted structural development. Africa’s ongoing political instability and economic crisis have hindered the improvement of Africa. Thus, the lack of money, advancement in technology, and climate has hampered economic development. Despite European mistreatment and oppression African’s have endured hardships that have encouraged economy, education, and political

The large cash injection would then create a “greasing the gears effect” and allow for the jumpstart of economic development. Between the years of 1948 and 1952 the U.S. granted $13 billion to revamp the European economy (Dambisa, 2009: 35). This particular method achieved great success in post-World War II Europe and was known as the Marshall Plan. Due to its effective and unquestionable success in this era, the model was applied to economic development in Africa with the confidence that the same outstanding results would ensue. However, the application of the Marshall Plan to Africa is problematic for three reasons. One, the Marshall Plan had a rigid duration period of five years while, the concessional loans and grants to Africa over the last 50 years have been unending (Dambisa, 2009: 36). Two, European institutions were already in place to receive the aid efficiently and effectively. In Africa, however, these same institutions are either non-existent or grossly ineffective due to corruption (Dambisa, 2009: 37). The vast amounts of corruption have been heavily documented. Mobutu Sese Seko, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997, for example, stole an equivalent of U.S. 5 billion dollars from his people (Dambisa, 2009: 48). However, even the less corrupt rulers of many African countries had few options as to what to invest the aid money on. Consequently, the bulk concessional aid goes directly into consumption without a variety of investment outlets. This process does not solve the problem but instead, allows for the cycle to continue. Lastly, three, the money from the Marshal had specific targets to repair physical infrastructure such as, roads, communications, sewage, factories, and electric systems (Dambisa, 2009: 37) In Africa today, the scope of the

There are difficulties in the study of this topic. The first one is the view of the historiography. Many economist and historians have considered Africa to be underdeveloped even before the colonialism period, which recent studies have proved to be wrong. Africa had a well-developed economic system, where the monetization of the economy had created a class society . There needs to be more investigation about this topic, which hopefully will bring some light to this interesting period in time. Secondly, the lack of primary sources is another obstacle to the study of this topic, many of the ones available are biased because they are from a European perspective. However, it is possible to find other material in archaeology, documents and oral stories. Thirdly, the continent of Africa is huge, and in its study, we should try to avoid generalizations, because it erases the particularities of each territory. Therefore, as said, we are going to focus on West and Central Africa, so the study will be more focused and specific.

In Nigeria, the issue of mismanagement and underutilization which led to huge wastage of resources and manpower potentials gave the government of the day no other option but to pursue quickly the privatization and commercialization program. They are about six hundred (600) public enterprises in Nigeria, ran by or controlled by the federal government, many are controlled by the state government. These companies take a sizable portion of the federal budget and account for over 5000 patronage. Transfers into these enterprises ran into billions on Naira. These transfers were in form of subsidized foreign exchange import duty waves, tax exemptions and/or write off of unrequited revenues, loans and guarantees and grants/subventions. These companies

Kingsley Moghalu author of Emerging Africa: How the Global Economy's Last Frontier Can Prosper argues that the African economic can be transformed once there is a paradigm shift. which includes African countries creating complex products, the development of a stronger intuition, the use of propaganda and development of central banks. He believes that African countries can gain wealth and prosperity once these paradigm shifts are applied.

Moreover, the infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa is inexpertly perfect, it has the world’s poorest transportation, power, and internet network. The colonial history of Sub-Saharan Africa did not like other colonies bring perfect infrastructure for them.

     There are over 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the wealth of natural resources and the prevalence of wealth in the northern segments of Africa have led many to speculate about the equity and economic development in the sub-Sahara. Unfortunately, the progression of economic, political and social factors in this region have done little to improve the overall conditions, and have instead demonstrated a consistent bias towards the government and the social elites that has impacted the chances of successful development in the region. Since the end of World War II, changes in the infrastructure, the political forces, and in the capacity for collective action in many of

There were many unsolved problems in a lot of the African countries, and the issue of the rise of corruption was disturbing. The fear of fraud leads to restrict movement of documents in offices, slow traffic on the highways, port congestion, ghost workers syndrome, queues at passport offices, police extortion toll gates, gas stations and vote irregularities among others all throughout Africa. So many people believe corruption is the bane, the cause of great distress, of many African countries. Corruption was the main reason why Africa’s economy got knocked down and slowed down its

Both Ghana and the Ivory Coast have been colonized in the 19th and 20th century, and both managed to gain their independence peacefully. After gaining their independence Ghana and the Ivory Coast were seen as economic and political models for African countries but facts and statistics from today will show that Ghana has emerged as one of Africa’s most stable democratic countries meanwhile the Ivory Coast is only starting to recover from its last civil war. How can two neighboring countries who have similar pasts at similar time frames become so different? What dependent and independent variable have changed the course these two countries were set out to take? We will answer these two questions and will pay close attention as to how and why these once similar countries became so different.

INTRODUCTIONBackground Sub-Saharan Africa continues to present the world with its most formidable developmentchallenge. During the last two decades the number of the poor in Africa has doubled from150 million to 300 million, more than 40 percent of the region’s population. About one thirdof the region’s population lives in countries affected by or emerging from conflict. Moreover,HIV/AIDS continues to threaten African lives and livelihoods. Africa is the only region thatremains behind on most of the MDGs. On current trends it will fall far short of meeting the2015 targets, (The World Bank, 2005).Africa has come a long way in its efforts to achieve sustainable development. Lessons of thecontinent’s development over the last two decades consistently highlighted the need for moreintensive efforts to effectively address some of its major development constraints. Acombination of ineffective policies, outright mismanagement (in some countries), heavyexternal debt burden, poor governance, and conflicts precipitated the massive economicdecline in the early 1980s. The recovery in the latter half of the decade was partly due tomajor economic policy reforms as well as growing socio-political pluralism and economicstability, which were consolidated in the decade of the 1990s. Yet, much still remains to bedone, as the African continent entered the 21st century faced with numerous developmentchallenges. Some of these challenges

In The Bottom Billion by Collier, he persuasively explains the reasons unindustrialized countries are developing at low rates. In addition, Collier proposes policies in an effort to get away from the sluggishness. Even though Collier has emphasized on the geopolitical affairs in the developing countries, there are shortcomings in his highlights. Collier does not take into account the historical context of those countries. Collier too does not take into consideration the role of Western countries in those four traps and the gaps in the available statistics about the poor countries. It is evident that Collier utilizes information from discussions he had with African leaders rather than taking a broader view of other people who have had experiences in those countries. Nonetheless, Collier has presented a strong piece in his book The Bottom Billion.Collier also outlines four traps that are the cause of the stagnation of the poorest countries, which include; increased conflict, the supply of natural resources, and the characteristic of being landlocked, and poor governance.

Privatization may have advantages on some business, but it also brings out some problems in another categories. Firstly, it actually reduces government revenue in long run. The government originally owned some shopping centres and carparks before the privatization of them to The Link, these shops actually make profit. Operating them require operation cost but the revenue generated by selling the products to people and renting spaces for shop owners can cover the cost. Profit could be made if they operate well. All revenues and expenditures will be taken charge by Link REIT after the privatization. In short run, the cost and expenditure of running the shopping centres and carparks are reduced so it can save government’s money. But in long run, the government will lose the profit generated by these shopping malls that could be originally earned by it if it does not privatize these centres to The Link.

From the close of World War II through the 1990s, sub-Saharan Africa experienced major transformations in form of accomplishments as well as challenges. Some of the accomplishments includes decolonization and gaining independence from previous colonial masters and subsequently moving away from authoritarian regimes to embrace democracy. They have also been faced with some challenges of poverty, and weak state. The main obstacle to the economic advancement of Africans is the social cum racial inequality between Africans and their colonizers in addition to the lack of human dignity experienced by Africans as the direct result of the policy of white supremacy.

Sub Saharan Africa has consistently been one of the most impoverished and least developed areas of the world. Looking at gross domestic product it is clear that sub-Saharan Africa remains generally under-developed economically, even when compared to the average per capita income in Latin America. There is also a good deal of consistency across countries with similar primary industries. Oil-rich countries such as Gabon and Congo have relatively high GDP per capita, as does resource-rich South Africa. Yet countries in Central and East Africa such as Burundi, the Central African Republic, and Malawi still have among the lowest per capita incomes in the world. The World Bank classifies Gabon

The 1990s represent a period of electoral pressures for most Sub-Saharan African countries as governments faced external influences for political liberalization but also waves of domestic mobilization and protests to demand a better economy, accountable and transparent governance legitimatized through competitive elections (Edie 2003, Bratton and van de Walle, 1992). The extent to