Environmental dimensions of managing public budgets and public enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study examines the nature of the environment in which public budgets and public enterprises are managed in developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It develops a model of the environmental dimensions in the general environment and dimensional components in the task environment of public budgeting and public enterprise management including the economic, political, socio-cultural, and technological dimension which determine public budget and public enterprise management in developing countries like those in Sub-Saharan Africa. The implications of those environmental dimensions and their components are evaluated for budgetary processes and budgetary outcomes in selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa - Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. The impact of economic dimensions in inducing repetitive budgeting in the budgetary processes of developing countries was highlighted. The results of the analysis of expenditure patterns in these countries tend to support the greater strength of the economic functional dimension in influencing budgetary outcomes. The implications of the environmental dimensions of the model for the management of public enterprises was also investigated. Numerous dimensional components of the major dimensions of the model developed in the study were found to have had an impact on the development of the public enterprise sector in developing countries like those in Sub- Saharan Africa. Moreover, the performance of public enterprises was strongly linked to the dimensions and components of the model. The interactive effects of public enterprise management on public budgeting in developing countries is also addressed as a consequence of the environmental model. Reform efforts must contend with altering the environmental state depicted in the model or accommodating to it.