The Governance of State-Owned Enterprises in Africa: an analysis of selected cases

Abstract

Whilst some literature is of the view that; it is nearly impossible to cultivate good corporate governance culture in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), others believe that new strategies of implementing corporate governance systems together with political will can deliver SOEs out of their efficiency doldrums. This paper presents a scientific analysis of the contentious view on the possibility of creating efficient governance mechanisms in SOEs, explores the effective cost for governance failures in SOEs in Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia. The paper makes conclusions and recommendation that the determinant factor to the success of SOEs in African countries is underpinned on the response of central government to the challenges of SOEs. Structural reforms, good governance, clear objectives and efficiency requires governments to take a decisive position. As a lasting remedial action, knowing which entities and when to offload them through privatisation, is an option in addressing the governance challenges in African SOEs. For strategic SOEs, the paper recommends that governments should consider listing them on public stock exchanges.

Driver Management and Service Delivery: Insights within State-Owned Enterprises in Zimbabwe

“…In addition, [25] pointed out that SOEs lack the ability to track and control the movement of vehicles and loose hundreds of dollars as regards poor fleet management practices. In the same manner, other scholars such as [26] and [27] observed that fleet management on SOEs in many African countries have in spite of good intentions generally been less efficient than private firms. [28] echoed that there is gross abuse of fleet in Tanzanian public entities since some motor vehicles are being involved in transporting unauthorized parcels, parking at drivers' houses, and in other private non authorized parking slots.…”

Challenges faced by CEOs in executing turnaround strategies in state-owned enterprises in South Africa

“…In South Africa, evidence in this case is how Telkom has managed to turn around by addressing the challenges it was facing as an organisation. Mutize and Tefera (2020) found Telkom to be one of the successful SOEs in Africa as a result of consistent profit after tax of more than R2.5 billion rands as from 2016. However, one has to take cognisance of the fact that, in the past, Telkom was bailed out several times by government because of under-performance (Thabane & Snyman-Van Deventer, 2018).…”

“…Past studies were fixated mostly on researching the performance of SOEs (Böwer 2017) and governance challenges in the SOEs (Chauke & Motubatse, 2020;Kanyane, 2018;Kanyane & Sambo, 2021;Kanyane & Sausi, 2015;Kikeri, 2018;Mutize & Tefera, 2020). The field of turnaround is under-researched in South Africa (Pretorius & Holtzhauzen, 2008).…”

Optimising supply chain effectiveness among state-owned enterprises in South Africa

“…However, the state keeps injecting them with bailouts to enable service delivery to the people (Carlson & Bussing 2020). The enormous debts that SOEs have incurred is a serious threat to the economy and most are failing to deliver products and services they are mandated to provide (Mutize & Tefera 2020).…”