Overview
Introduction Although some Sub-Saharan African countries are catching up to higherincome countries, many are falling behind despite their best efforts and those of the development community. Since their independence, a number of African countries have faced state-building and governance challenges, sometimes in the context of widespread political turbulence, civil conflict, military rule, and state failure, which has resulted in unevenness of national state capacity (asymmetrical state capabilities that vary across sector, scale of government, and over time), weakened political settlements, and ineffective civil society. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic could exacerbate these challenges and lead to the emergence of new ones from the socioeconomic effects of containment measures. To explain current development outcomes and inform reforms, an increasing number of development partners are integrating sociopolitical framings into their strategies and programs. Development policy of the 1980s and 1990s often focused on liberalization, privatization, and austerity, aimed at reducing or limiting the size and scope of the state. These reforms were later criticized for their shortcomings, which spurred a rethinking of the approach to statebuilding and development. The World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law, for example, argues that “policies that should be effective in generating positive development outcomes are often not adopted, are poorly implemented, or end up backfiring over time” (World Bank 2017, 2), and that the radically uneven character of public policy formulation, implementation, and enforcement is a matter of governance, namely, “the process through which state and nonstate actors interact to design and implement policies within a given set of formal and informal rules that shape and are shaped by power” (World Bank 2017, 3). 1
