Africa: Privatising Basic Utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa

This policy research brief draws on the findings of a UNDP-supported book, Privatization and Alternative Public Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bayliss and Fine, forthcoming), to analyze the effects of privatization on the delivery of water and electricity. It concludes that privatization has been a widespread failure. This has hampered progress on the MDGs for both water and sanitation, and on many other MDGs dependent on energy.