Transforming The African Public Service

This volume is an attempt to consistently think through the reform of the public administration and public service dynamics that could serve as an institutional framework for reorienting Africa's postcolonial predicament. Africa has often been regarded, among other uncomplimentary epithets, as the most difficult administrative contexts in the world. The failure of the public service in Africa is essentially the failure of the democratic experiment in Africa. The ten lectures gathered in this significant volume derive from the author's practical and intellectual involvement with public administration thinking on the continent including the articulation of the African Public Service Charter under the auspices of the African Union Commission. The essays are all united by a firm conviction that once the public/civil service in Africa fails, then all else has failed in terms of an infrastructural transformation of Africa that will make democratic governance a meaningful experiment for Africans. The volume therefore delivers a serious trajectory of how the African public service and administrative dynamics can leverage on global best practices and existing reform ideas to undermine the African predicament and install good governance for Africans. "...there is no one better positioned to take up the urgent task of fashioning the philosophical and intellectual enterprise crucial to the re-alignment of public service in Africa, which he superbly demonstrates throughout the pages of this book..." Toyin Falola, Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, The University of Texas at Austin