David K. Leonard

The political realities of African management

Abstract Amidst the outburst of concern for public management in Africa there is frequently a failure to distinguish among its components—policy-making, leadership, general internal administration and bureaucratic hygiene (accounting, procurement, the merit system, etc.). Each of these four areas is different in the importance that it has for project performance, the knowledge base that is available for improving it, and the way in which it is affected by African political and social structures. As a consequence those seeking to improve public management on the continent frequently are mistaken in the priorities that they establish and import inappropriate management technologies.

Gender Bias and the College Predictions of the SATs: A Cry of Despair.

This study reviews and extends the considerableliterature demonstrating that the various College Boardexaminations (most importantly the Scholastic AptitudeTests) make a small underprediction of womens college grades relative to those of men in allfields except engineering. This finding persists evenwhen corrections are made for differences in the fieldsthat women and men study and for sample selection bias. Because of this underprediction, womenmost probably are underrepresented relative to theirmerit in freshman classes and scholarship competitionsat selective public universities. The differences in predicted grades are small, but account foran underrepresentation of women by at least 5% of thefreshman classes of the University of California atBerkeley (200 to 300 a year) in the late 1980s. Various solutions to this underprediction by the SATsand the dilemmas they pose for public universities suchas Berkeley are explored.

The supply of veterinary services: Kenyan Lessons

This paper evaluates various organizational options for the delivery of veterinary care on the basis of Kenyas experience, particularly in small mixed farming areas. Veterinary services can be divided into those that are preventive, curative and promotive. Prevention and promotion are public goods and are appropriate governmental activities under virtually all circumstances. Curative veterinary practice is a private good, however, and is suited to the state sector only in special circumstances. In most situations the available evidence suggests that commercialized practice will actually deliver a greater quantity of clinical care more equitably than a highly subsidized public service does. The sociological dynamics of these three aspects of veterinary medicine have implications for their organizational placement within government as well. The public demand for curative services is very strong, and financial and professional rewards for meeting it are great. This means that in practice veterinary staff in developing countries will not give promotive work and other aspects of livestock production extension their due, whatever their theoretical commitment to it. Thus there is good reason for these two types of work to be kept organizationally separate. Prevention is as high as curative medicine in the professional values of veterinarians, even though it is not as rewarding financially. Therefore, there does not appear to be any problem with the two being integrated in the early stages of their development. Once disease prevention is moderately advanced, the time pressures seem to become more moderate and it appears possible for it to be combined with extension work. Preventive activities work better when they are controlled by the state. Furthermore, when wide coverage of vaccinations is desired, it is most efficient to finance them out of tax revenues, not user fees. Community groups have been quite successful in financing the construction of dips but have been disappointing in operating them.

The Political Economy of Improving Health Care for the Poor in Rural Africa: Institutional Solutions to the Principal–Agent Problem

Both governments and private for-profit markets have been disappointing in meeting the needs of the African poor for health care. NGO services provide a much more attractive alternative for this clientele, despite the fees they charge. They do so because they represent an institutional solution to the ‘imperfect information’ problem in health care. Through simulations based on data from Cameroon, we demonstrate that if fee-charging NGOs replace the highly subsidised but poorly managed facilities operated by African governments the poor would be better off. Those NGOs that are decentralised in their financial and personnel management are most effective. The politics of making the recommended changes are assessed.

African practice and the theory of user fees

Abstract The theory which guides the levying of user fees has been constructed in the industrialized world, particularly for application to public utilities. There is a danger that the theory will create dysfunctions as it is applied to new social environments and to new service areas. This paper examines the experience of Kenya with user fees in the agricultural sector in order to identify some of the unforeseen ways in which the actualities of African development diverge from the implicitly Western assumptions of the theory. The conclusion is that user fees have a number of very attractive features for Africa, but that they also have to be applied with care and modification if they are to have their intended positive impact on agricultural services.

Path analysis of subsistence farmers' use of veterinary services in Zimbabwe.

We used factor and path analyses to identify the causal paths or relationships between variables affecting the demand and use by subsistence farmers of the various services offered by government-employed veterinary livestock technicians (VLTs) in Zimbabwe in 1996. We examined whether the farmer had implemented the VLT-recommended livestock-management procedures. Various factors that have been reported or theorized as important in the demand for veterinary services by subsistence farmers are described. The important factors positively affecting whether farmers had sought veterinary assistance in the last 24 months included familiarity of the farmer with the VLT, if situated closer to the VLTs base, and if the farmer received further training in agriculture (either through courses or from attendance at demonstrations on animal husbandry conducted by the VLT). Factors affecting whether farmers implemented the recommended management practices that had a monetary cost included familiarity with the VLT, proximity to the VLTs premises, farmer literacy, club membership, and farmers wealth. There was a difference in the paths generated for preventive measures that had a monetary cost versus those measures that involved only a labour or effort costs. For the former practices, the VLT played an important role informing farmers by extension and demonstrations, and farmers membership of a club increased their performance.

Microcomputers and financial management in development ministries: Experience from Kenya

Kenyas Ministries of Agriculture and Livestock Development have recently begun to use microcomputers as a tool for improved financial management. The conventional wisdom has been that the use of such high technology is inappropriate in a developing country, where capital is scarce and labour abundant. Such an assessment may well be mistaken with regard to microcomputers, for their capital costs are modest and they can extend the effectiveness of scarce, skilled managers. In this paper case studies are provided of three applications of microcomputers to financial management in which the authors have directly participated. The likely preconditions are then evaluated for the successful use of microcomputers in similar situations.

Does reliance on tax revenue build state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa?

Academics and donors have increasingly argued that African states can enhance their general administrative capacity by improving tax revenue collection. Proponents argue that administratively demanding improvements in tax administration may spillover to other areas of public administration by introducing improved practices, necessitating improvements elsewhere and providing data for other government activities. We make the first effort to test this hypothesis empirically, using an improved cross-country data set for sub-Saharan Africa. We find some evidence that from 1973 until the late 1990s improvements in tax administration tended to precede broader administrative improvements, consistent with the research hypothesis. By contrast, we find no evidence of such a pattern over the past decade. We conclude that these results provide tentative support for the hypothesis that improvements in tax collection can be a catalyst for broader gains in state capacity, but that such linkages are not guaranteed and depend on the particular character of reform. Points for practitioners Those involved with public administrative reform efforts have long been confronted with the question of whether reform is, or should be, an essentially system-wide process, or focused on developing ‘pockets of effectiveness’. This debate is particularly relevant to tax reform: a growing academic literature has argued that tax reform can be a catalyst for system-wide change, but the dominant reform model has focused on the creation of autonomous revenue agencies to achieve rapid but focused capacity gains. This research examines the case for believing that tax reform can be a catalyst for broader reform, and thus the case for adopting a reform model that focuses more explicitly on system-wide change.

Budgeting and financial management in Kenya's agricultural ministries

Abstract During the 1970s the financial management of Kenyas agricultural ministries became relatively poor. With the abundant fiscal resources that accompanied the coffee boom, financial discipline seemed merely a nuisance to government officers. In this paper, exactly how budgeting and resource management were performed during these years, before major correctives were begun in 1982, is described. This account is of interest beyond the boundaries of Kenya because, despite the fiscal laxity described, it has been one of the better administered states in Africa. Its financial management systems closely parallel those of other former British colonies, and Kenyas problems in this area are present in even greater force elsewhere on the African continent. Since donors, technical assistance personnel and even many Kenyan officials are innocent of the magnitude of those shortcomings, this paper may help them to acquire greater realism in the design and management of projects with which they are involved. In a sequel paper, the way in which the introduction of a microcomputer assisted in lessening some of these problems in Kenya will be described.

Institutional Solutions to the Principal-Agent Problem in African Health Care

Free markets for health care in Africa do not function properly, in that patients exhibit willingness to pay for health care and yet practitioners are unable to sell their services. It is widely acknowledged that health markets everywhere are troubled with imperfect information. Therefore it is no surprise that free markets and spot contracts do not lead to an efficiently functioning market for health care. When issues of agency are not resolved we find practitioners specializing in the sale of pharmaceuticals but not using their skills as diagnosticians. Mechanisms that can reduce agency cost are beneficial to both patients and practitioners. This paper draws on theory and empirical evidence to examine what institutions are necessary to solve the problems of imperfect information in this context. We dismiss government regulation because the regulatory capacity does not exist in most African countries. Theory suggests that self--regulation by professional bodies should arise as privatization continues. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that this conclusion is overly-optimistic. On the other hand, referral networks perform much the same function but do not require centralized control. The most successful institution for the delivery of quality medical care in Africa is that of independent, pre-existing value-based organizations (missions) and we suggest their choice of institutional form has contributed to their success.