Political economy of accounting and governance in Africa

Governance has become an important concept in the development agenda and forms part and parcel of the development discourse and has, thus, become central in donor decisions. Unfortunately, while government accounting system is likely to contribute to strengthening governance, most efforts in the areas to ultimately improve governance fail or achieve limited results. This paper examines the views of various stakeholders on the ground to understand the lack of success in government accounting and governance initiatives. Our analysis is based on case studies conducted in two African countries, namely Benin and Ghana. Data was collected by ways of interviews, informal discussions and document analysis. The views of the participants were paramount in drawing tentative conclusions from the study. We find that weak governance and accounting systems and the resistance to improve go beyond widely reported corruption, weak capacity and lack of ownership but rather lie within the political economic forces and interests at work in Africa. Three groups of forces and interests are found to shape the state of governance and accounting system. These are (1) internal political system and institution forces, (2) internal economic interests/forces, and (3) international political economic forces and interests. In conclusion we suggest that in order to understand governance and how this should be improved requires engaging with the stakeholders on the ground. Furthermore, we conclude that accounting is central to the analysis of governance and should be accorded more importance in the development arena