Paper - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

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other economists. Afterwards, it was clear that these institutions failed to perform well
their central tasks, and one of the explanations commonly put forward is that they were
captured by financial interests. Capture is, of course, a mark of “failed” institutions.)
They have an even harder time defining how one creates and maintains good institutions.
As we explain in Section V, the papers in this volume argue that the standard discussion
of governance is as misdirected as that of “good policies.”
One contribution in this volume, in particular offers a fundamentally different
perspective from the dominant one informing most of the chapters: the one by Augustin
Fosu. His paper and the first one of the two contributions by Mushtaq Khan make for a
particularly interesting contrast.
Analytic studies
Whilst both on average and in most countries, performance on growth, structural
change and poverty reduction in Africa has been disappointing in the “lost quarter
century”, the reversal of the trend of falling per capita income in the past decade or so has
raised the question of whether this recent acceleration is mainly another turn in the
familiar African cycle of boom and bust, reflecting trends in commodity prices and the
international economy, or as some have argued, represent a belated vindication of the
“Washington Consensus” or at any rate, its reformed version. The latter view implies that
the dominant policy agenda does not need to be altered in any particularly radical
manner.
This volume contains several studies which try to parse out the relative roles of
the various factors affecting African growth. The answers have strong policy
implications. Augustin Fosu’s contribution to this volume provides support to the view
that the growth is the result of policy reforms. His paper in this volume arose out of a
major research project, “Explaining African Growth” of the Africa Economic Research
Consortium (AERC). 25 Their work places considerable emphasis not only on the role of
geography but also what the AERC project refers to as “syndromes” in the growth
experience of African countries.
Noting the stop-go history of growth in Africa, one strand of the AERC growth
project seeks to look at what explains the ending and beginning of growth episodes. 26
The anti-growth syndrome is said to consist of some combination of (i) excessive
regulation (e.g. the “bad old days” in Ghana and Tanzania); (ii) inappropriate
redistributive policies (e.g. once upon a time in Burundi); (iii) sub-optimal inter-temporal
allocation of natural resource rents (e.g. Nigeria); and (iv) state failure (e.g. Zaire,
Liberia). Avoiding this syndrome is deemed to be a “near necessary” condition for
25 Paul Collier, who also played a key role in this project, also made a presentation to the first meeting of
the Task Force.
26 in addition to Augustin Fosu’s chapter here, see also Augustin Kwasi Fosu and Stephen O’Connell
“Explaining African Growth: The Role of Anti-Growth Syndromes”, August 4, 2005 (posted on the IPD
website for the Africa Task Force Meetings).