Firm-level Perspectives on State–Business Relations in Africa: The Food-processing Sector in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia

Abstract

Experiences from developed and emerging economies inform us that close state-business relations are crucial for economic development and structural transformation. Based on the positive experiences from other parts of the world, most African governments have begun processes to establish collaborative State Business Relations (SBRs). Amongst other initiatives, these processes include amendments to existing laws to facilitate public-private interaction, direct support to existing business associations, and support for and establishment of publicprivate dialogue fora. This paper draws on an analysis of survey data from 210 local firms, complemented with qualitative data from interviews with 41 firms, a number of 20 key informants and a range of secondary sources on the food processing sectors of Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. The paper shows that businesses in these countries have limited policy influence, find policies and programs to be inadequate when targeting the needs and requirements of local businesses and that business associations in these countries are poorly organised. In spite of initiatives taken by the states and other actors, including an increase in the number of formal relations between state and businesses, it is difficult to conclude whether SBRs are collaborative or collusive. The paper contributes to the existing SBR literature by adding a firm-level perspective and by enhancing our knowledge on the usefulness of key theoretical approaches to these issues in an African context.

State–Business Relations, Financial Access and Firm Performance: A Causal Mediation Analysis

“…SBR is the most effective if the Business Association's (BA) organizational capacity is sufficient and the practice of SBR is proper enough toinfluence economic performance of the business environment (Taylor, 2012). 2 Informal links are indispensable aspects of SBR (Charles et al, 2017). In the context of rent-seeking activities, ruling elites would take required informal steps to consolidate their roles and dominance within the SBR (Whitfield et al, 2015).…”

“…capacity of BAs in dealing with tax and administrative issues) because no such data were available in the survey. As argued by Taylor (2012) and Charles et al (2017), this would preclude the examination of an important informal dimension of SBR for the MENA region countries. Our choice for identifying SBR is restricted to firms' responses to the questions in the BEEPS survey.…”

A Changing Global Development Agenda?

“…Contributions in this special issue by Bigsten (2017) and Kaul (2017) also broadly take a global social market line. Although having less global perspective, Charles et al (2017) in the spirit of social market policy underline the importance of collaborative state-business relations in achieving sustainable development.…”

“…In this light, a Center for Global Development publication has spoken of 'hypercollective action' (Severino and Ray, 2010). Others have conveyed the multi-actor condition of contemporary development policy processes with notions of 'regime complex', 'actor-network theory', 'assemblage', 'multi-scalar meta-governance' and more (Jessop, 2009;Keohane and Victor, 2011;Latour, 2005;Ong and Collier, 2005;Aguilar-Støen, 2017;Charles et al, 2017;Kontinen and Millstein, 2017). Yet, whatever name is applied to the situation, many diffuse and fluid sites are seeking to shape today's global development agenda.…”

“…In this special issue, for example, Kontinen and Millstein (2017) underline that state and non-state actors come together in different networks and alliances around development. Goodluck Charles et al (2017) highlight the role of firms in development and strong cross-sectoral ties in state-business relations. Aguilar-Støen (2017) invites readers to reflect about both the proliferation of non-state actors and the porosity of the boundaries between state and non-state sectors.…”