Comparative African Experiences in Implementing Educational Policies

Abstract

This paper reviews the scholarly literature concerned, directly or indirectly, with the implementation of educational policies in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper consists of three parts. Part I considers the reasons both for past neglect of implementation issues and for the current interest in the subject. Part II offers general observations concerning the literature on the implementation of educational policies in Africa, and characterizes this literature with respect to the policies considered, the countries studied, and other variables. Part III outlines the major conceptual frameworks that have been developed for the analysis of implementation issues. It then considers the matter of causation as addressed, explicitly or implicitly, in the literature on educational policy implementation in Africa. Six major sets of variables are identified, and the arguments that have been advanced with respect to the explanatory significance of each set are summarized. The paper concludes with some comments on the deficiencies of the literature reviewed and with a call for research that is better informed by the often more sophisticated work of those who have studied implementation issues in other policy domains and in other parts of the world.