Reflections on the role of the World Bank in public enterprises and privatization in Africa 1

The World Bank, as one of the principal development finance institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, has helped a large number of governments in shaping their policies and practices toward public enterprises. At the end of 1988, the Bank ² was supporting programmes of public enterprise reform in over thirty-four countries in the Africa Region. In no other region are the Bank's activities on public enterprises as extensive and pervasive. This chapter looks back at the evolution of the Bank's public enterprise reform activities since the late 1970s, with particular emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa, and then examines the Bank’s approach and experiences in such reforms including privatization.