ABSTRACT
Many contemporary states in Africa are not economically viable and will remain mired in political crises because of the unsustainable and low levels of economic production and demand in the domestic markets. The institutional infrastructures–education, healthcare and information technology – remain inadequate or noncompetitive in the engineering of sustainable services industry in place of unlikely investments in manufacturing activities in these states. For institutionalists, individuals and their preferences and the institutional contexts in which public policies are made are at the center of resolving public economic and political problems. Understanding the differences in the economic and political contexts of public policy is important because the process in an economic context is mostly based on voluntary individual rational decision making in largely decentralized levels of interaction, with passive public purpose. Given the rules and institutions, individual capacity to change them is largely dictated by the individual or group resources matched against those of the opposition in the context of politics.
