This book is the product of research undertaken at the African Development Bank (AfDB) on the lessons that the continent of Africa can draw from the role of the state in Asia's rapid economic development in the last 50 years. The book applies a cross-national comparative framework to analyse Africa's performance drawing broadly on the developmental states of Asia (i.e. Japan, China, India, Vietnam, etc.) with focus on South Korea. The book argues that for Africa to replicate Asia's developmental success, it may require more than just tweaking the public sector machinery. Dedicated institutions and a citizenry capable of demanding accountability from governments must become key ingredients of the development strategy.
The book also provides insight into the learning experiences of Asia, in addressing key national policy challenges i.e. land reform and quality of public administration at the federal and local levels, enhancing technical skills, boosting capabilities for sciences, engineering and mathematics, and industrialization.
About the Author: Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa was recently Economic Governance Advisor, Prime Minister's Office, Kingdom of Eswatini (2019) and Advisor at the Independent Evaluation Office, IMF (2018). At the African Development Bank, he was, successively, Lead Economist, Director (Strategy and Policy; Country Operations; Development Research) and Acting Chief Economist and Vice President. He holds a PhD from the University of Gothenburg, with a dissertation on economic adjustment in Zambia, and became an Associate Professor there in 1994. He has worked or undertaken research at the following universities: Makerere, Zambia, Nairobi, Cape Town (Adjunct Professor, 2015-2020), Stockholm, Lund, Helsinki, New York (Visiting Scholar at Africa House), and Cornell (Visiting Fellow at the Institute for African Development) and published widely. He was also Senior Economist at the IMF and Fellow and Project Director at the World Institute of Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, based in Helsinki.
Charles Leyeka Lufumpa is Acting Vice President and Chief Economist for Economic Governance and Knowledge and Director of Statistics at the African Development Bank Group. He has led several Bank initiatives, in collaboration with the UN and the African Union, for the collection, management, and use of social and economic statistics to enhance Africa's statistical agenda. Notably, an African Statistical Portal, hosted by the AfDB, was developed to which all African national statistical offices have real-time access. Following his BA in economics and statistics at the University of Zambia, he proceeded to Iowa State University, where he completed MSc (1989) and PhD degrees (1991) in agricultural economics and forest resource economics and statistics, respectively. His research interests are in statistics, poverty analysis, infrastructure development, agricultural innovation, and environmental economics. Dr. Lufumpa has co-edited (with Professor Mthuli Ncube) two volumes of research work in the recent past: The Emerging Middle Class in Africa, Routledge, 2014, and Infrastructure in Africa: Lessons for Future Development, Bristol Policy Press, 2017.
