What Works for Public Sector Reform in Africa ? Preliminary Evidence on New Public Management Reforms in World Bank Projects

Overview & Synopsis

This paper examines the prevalence and effectiveness of public sector reforms promoting performance-based incentives and greater autonomy in public administrations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Inspired by the New Public Management paradigm, these reforms have been widely adopted despite limited systematic evaluation of their results. The paper draws on data and information on the design, implementation, and performance of World Bank–financed public sector reform projects in Sub-Saharan Africa implemented between 2010 and 2023, complemented by four qualitative in-depth case studies. The analysis shows that over one-third of World Bank–financed public sector reform projects during this period included at least one New Public Management intervention. The performance of these interventions has, however, been uneven across contexts and reform types. Only 40 percent of the interventions were fully implemented. Performance varied considerably across reform types, with performance-based public financial management reforms performing comparatively better than agencification and performance-based pay reforms. The findings suggest that weaknesses in reform design—including insufficient attention to institutional capacity and implementation constraints as well as political economy dynamics—have contributed to these mixed outcomes. Case studies further show that New Public Management reforms are particularly difficult to sustain in fragile and neo-patrimonial contexts. The paper argues that the diffusion of New Public Management–inspired approaches has often outpaced the available evidence on their effectiveness and highlights the need for more context-sensitive and evidence-based approaches to public sector reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa.