The potential impacts of privatization on health care delivery in sub-Saharan Africa

Uses the case of health care delivery to demonstrate that, despite its theoretical appeal, privatization has questionable utility as a strategy to enhance the development process in sub-Saharan Africa. Because privatization is designed as a strategy to improve the performance of state-owned enterprises, particularly in the developed market economies, its applicability to economies in sub-Saharan Africa is limited. This does not suggest that Western-based strategies are necessarily irrelevant for development problems in Africa, but rather that the nature of African economies is such that a market-based strategy like privatization has questionable utility and scope. -from Authors