Corporate governance in Africa’s public sector for sustainable development: The task ahead

Abstract

Investors around the world place emphasis on good corporate governance. This makes it imperative for the integration of good governance into corporate governance for sustainable development in Africa. There is a high mix of business with state politics in most African countries, whereby ownership is in most cases concentrated around top political elites. As a result, other stakeholders and minority shareholders often lack adequate institutional and legal protection, while managers are unable to fully exercise their mandate or do not bear the full costs of their actions. Also, even though corporations adopt international accounting standards, they hardly put them into practice breeding managerial deficiencies and abuse of discretion pervasive on the continent. Interpretivist or constructivist approach informed this study through a desktop research. An interrogation of the corporate governance principles in the public sector of selected countries in West Africa and Southern Africa was performed as prompted by the results of the various indices. Results reveal that ‘excessive’ political decisions are handed down to public officials as directives from political bigwigs. Good corporate governance must play a role in aligning the interests of politicians, bureaucrats and the electorate. An implementation framework is developed and recommended for sustainable development as the task ahead.