The Changing Role of the State in Formerly-Socialist Economies of Africa

Abstract

Beginning in the middle of the 1980s, a number of African economies redirected their development strategies away from the avowedly Marxist, state-dominated approach that they had adopted after independence, towards strategies that made better use of market mechanisms, and that strove to reorientate the role of the state in the economy. Many of the stages in these reform programme are similar to the steps taken by the formerly socialist economies of Asia, and East and Central Europe, and in the major liberalisations undertaken in many Latin American economies during the 1980s to introduce and strengthen capitalist structures. But while these other episodes have been the subject of much study, rather less is known about what happened in the African cases, and why.

The authors are economists at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank respectively. This article reflects the views of the authors and does not represent the views of their institutions.