ABSTRACT
By proclaiming that a ‘crisis of governance’ underlies ‘the litany of Africa’s development problems’, the World Bank’s 1989 report Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth placed the concept of good governance at the heart of the donor agenda for Africa (World Bank 1989:60). Painfully confronted at the time with the relative failure of its structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), the World Bank was inclined in this report to blame the weak, predatory and neo-patrimonial African states for the poor performance of structural adjustment rather than to question its own neo-liberal reform package. It therefore stressed the need not only for less but also for better government in African states.
