Locates the inefficiencies of the traditional public enterprise model within its management and contextual factors. The former include overprotection from consumer liability, statutory power to commit wrongs with impunity, and legal limitations on their liability for negligence.

Over the past three decades, African countries have been reforming their public sector with a view to improving efficiency, effectiveness, accountability and transparency as part of efforts to improve the delivery of public services. Reform actions have included privatisation, public/private partnerships, commercialisation and adoption of private sector approaches in managing public organisations. This book, put together by OSSREA, reviews measures by African countries in that regard, the extent to which the measures have achieved their intended results, as well as the factors behind the failure to achieve those results, where this was the case.