Governance and Growth Challenges for Africa

The World Bank recognized the role of concerted state strategies in driving growth in a number of successful East Asian countries (World Bank 1993). However, this qualified recognition was attended with the observation that the appropriate state capacities for productive interventions were missing in most other developing countries. In these countries, attempts to replicate East Asian strategies would not only fail, but would make things worse due to static efficiency losses and rent-seeking costs. At one level, the World Bank's argument against growth-promoting strategies of the East Asian type in most developing countries is absolutely accurate. The appropriate governance capabilities are clearly absent in many of the poorest countries that are most in need of growth strategies. Moreover, an attempt to acquire state capabilities on a scale that would enable these countries to attempt the types of interventionist programmes seen in East Asian countries in the 1960s and 1970s is probably beyond the feasible capacity of reform in these developing countries.