Capacity building for the power sector is an important national responsibility, which Governments in Africa need to seriously address. The inability of Governments to mobilize the required level of investment and commitment to the development and retention of a wide array of skills needed by the power sector is, in part, responsible for many of the difficulties that are faced by the region's electricity industry.Under the aegis of the AFREPREN Capacity Building Theme Group, a regional study and four country studies (Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Ethiopia and South Africa) addressed the capacity building question in the African power sector. This volume presents the findings of the studies.The studies analyse issues of manpower recruitment, training and retention in national power utilities. They also highlight the challenges and implications of capacity building initiatives in a reforming electricity industry and propose innovative options for capacity building in the region's power sector.

Today, the public sector in Africa, like in much of the rest of the world, is perceived as having led to inefficiency, waste, indifference and corruption in the provision of public services generally. The power supply sector is now experiencing a process of restructuring and reform, including privatization. The contributors to this volume, who are themselves involved in the policy process in their own countries, examine how far this movement towards restructuring and reform has proceeded in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.Based on empirical research, the authors have generated policy options and scenarios that are bound to be of vital interest to policy makers and implementers throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Among the key topics dealt with are: the determinants of performance and efficiency; vertical and horizontal unbundling of power generation, distribution and sales; the role of independent power producers; the benefits and risks attendant on reform and privatization; and the legal and regulatory framework on which everything else depends.

As part of the wave of liberalisation sweeping most parts of the world, power sectors around the globe are coming under intense scrutiny, with some being restructured. This book presents six-country-case studies to examine the process and implementation experiences of power sector reform in Subsaharan Africa.

This publication considers options for strengthening institutional capacity within the public sector in African countries, by drawing on the experiences of public sector reform programmes in over a dozen African states. Issues discussed include: the relationship between governance and economic development, public expenditure and accountability, anti-corruption reforms, the politics of decentralisation, political structures and public service delivery.

During the 1990s, a new paradigm for power sector reform was put forward emphasizing the restructuring of utilities, the creation of regulators, the participation of the private sector, and the establishment of competitive power markets. Twenty-five years later, only a handful of developing countries have fully implemented these Washington Consensus policies. Across the developing world, reforms were adopted rather selectively, resulting in a hybrid model, in which elements of market orientation coexist with continued state dominance of the sector. This book aims to revisit and refresh thinking on power sector reform approaches for developing countries. The approach relies heavily on evidence from the past, drawing both on broad global trends and deep case material from 15 developing countries. It is also forward looking, considering the implications of new social and environmental policy goals, as well as the emerging technological disruptions. A nuanced picture emerges. Although regulation has been widely adopted, practice often falls well short of theory, and cost recovery remains an elusive goal. The private sector has financed a substantial expansion of generation capacity; yet, its contribution to power distribution has been much more limited, with efficiency levels that can sometimes be matched by well-governed public utilities. Restructuring and liberalization have been beneficial in a handful of larger middle-income nations but have proved too complex for most countries to implement. Based on these findings, the report points to three major policy implications. First, reform efforts need to be shaped by the political and economic context of the country. The 1990s reform model was most successful in countries that had reached certain minimum conditions of power sector development and offered a supportive political environment. Second, countries found alternative institutional pathways to achieving good power sector outcomes, making a case for greater pluralism. Among the top performers, some pursued the full set of market-oriented reforms, while others retained a more important role for the state. Third, reform efforts should be driven and tailored to desired policy outcomes and less preoccupied with following a predetermined process, particularly since the twenty-first-century century agenda has added decarbonization and universal access to power sector outcomes. The Washington Consensus reforms, while supportive of the twenty-first-century century agenda, will not be able to deliver on them alone and will require complementary policy measures

7. Summary and conclusions.

Reforming the African Public Sector: Retrospect and Prospectsis an in-depth and wide-ranging review of the available literature on African public sector reforms. It illustrates several differing country experiences to buttress the main observations and conclusions. It adopts a structural/institutional approach which underpins most of the reform efforts on the continent. To contextualize reform of the public sector and understand its processes, dynamics and intricacies, the book examines the state and state capacity building in Africa, especially when there can be no state without an efficient public sector. In addition, the book addresses a number of theories such as the new institutional economics, public choice and new public management, which have in one way or another influenced most of the initiatives implemented under public sector reform in Africa. There is also a survey of the three phases of public sector reform which have emerged and the balance sheet of reform strategies, namely, decentralization, privatization, deregulation, agencification, co-production and public-private partnerships. It concludes by identifying possible alternative approaches such as developing a vigorous public sector ethos and sustained capacity building to promote and enhance the renewal and reconstruction of the African public sector within the context of the New Partnerships for Africa's Development (NEPAD), good governance and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).