ABSTRACT
With the collapse of communism as an alternative economic system to free market ideas and policies in the late 1980s, and early 1990s, scholars and policy makers across the world but especially in Africa have had to grapple with redefining their thinking space, framework and ideological approaches to scholarship, and policy making. For African scholars and policy makers, the central task since the 1960s remains how to achieve viable and sustainable economic growth and political stability. It is an issue that is at the core of public policy which the government or decision makers choose to do or not.2 It involves the managing of political space to ensure that scarce economic resources are adequately utilized to achieve the most efficient government delivery of social and infrastructural services, which would enable individuals and/or groups to engage in entrepreneurial activities that add value to government; and societal efforts at economic growth and political stability. Within this context, and given persistent problems with achieving the right mix of ideas and policies for economic growth and political stability in Africa, contributors to this volume explain and discuss public policy processes by analyzing how ideas make it to the agenda tables of policy makers in various African states.
