… the question of good governance in Africa came up. But it came up as a condition of giving aid to African countries … in practice that phrase meant and means those countries having multi-party systems of democracy, economies based on the principle of private ownership and of international free trade and a good record of human rights: again as defined by the industrialised market economy countries of the North. It was in this kind of context that we in Africa heard about ‘good governance’ … For used in this manner, good governance sounded like a tool for neo-colonialism. We have therefore tended to despise the concept even as, out of necessity, we try to qualify under it.

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, I focus on one of the most influential mainstream institutional responses to questions of poverty, especially the poverty caused by the inability to access water, healthcare, electricity and other economic and social rights, among other problems of development in Africa. Many such problems are assumed to arise from the existence of a profound governance question, one that (as the mantra suggests) can only be resolved by the concept of good governance. Good governance is a concept inspired by the Bretton Wood Institutions' (BWIs) lending initiatives. Its over-arching philosophy seeks to substitute the state for the market in processes of governance, particularly (as discussed in more detail in Chapter 4) in the process of governance of human rights.