Preparing Africa for the twenty-first century: Lessons from constitutional economics

Abstract

Abstract. In the 1960s, when most African countries gained independence, they had an opportunity to select new political and economic institutions to promote growth and development. After more than three decades of political autonomy, it now appears that the opportunity made possible by decolonization was wasted and never fully utilized to promote sustainable development in the continent. As a result, after more than thirty years of independence, most of Africa remains poor and highly deprived. Political economy in the continent is characterized by opportunism, promoted by political coalitions whose primary objective is to subvert the rules to generate benefits for themselves. The end of the Cold War and the subsequent cessation of superpower rivalry, in addition to the demise of apartheid in South Africa, has provided policy makers in Africa another opportunity to choose new institutions to lead Africans into the twenty-first century. Public choice and constitutional economics provide guidelines that can be utilized to develop efficient and self-enforcing institutions to enhance development and effect significant increases in social welfare in Africa in the next century.