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Abstract:
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This thesis attempts to explore the factors affecting private sector performance in Africa. More specifically, the thesis explores the hypothesis that extrinsic factors are more significant in explaining this performance than are intrinsic factors. Extrinsic factors include those such as government provision of roads, power outages, government efficiency, and business obstacles. Intrinsic factors include those such as education level of the manager, ethnicity of the owner, investment in technology, and self-provision of certain services. Rejecting or failing to reject this hypothesis could have significant implications on work done by various members of government, civil society, and the private sector. These are those who may believe, for instance, that private sector-led growth (and the associated intrinsic decisions made by entrepreneurs, investors, and other businessmen) is more important than government policy or that, alternatively, governmental factors such as corruption and the creation of an enabling business environment trump the efforts made by those attempting to invest in African growth and development. Data used is that of the World Bank Group's Investment Climate Survey (ICS) which collects information from businesses in various countries around the world within topical areas such as technology, trade, infrastructure, business environment, sales, and finance. Data used is from manufacturing firms of several African countries from the year 2002. Data, and in general research, used to explore hypotheses similar to that explored here did not necessarily explore firm level data in depth, used different measures of performance, resulted in only qualitative findings, or developed only descriptive statistics. This thesis intends to utilize the ICS data fully so to improve upon previous work done in this thesis' thematic area as well as develop significant findings and implications associated with the hypothesis. |