“This paper highlights the role of competition and marketization in enhancing the quality of the goods and services provided by the public sector.The primary objective is to supply a framework for analyzing how competition and marketization impact the quality of service provision in developing countries, with special attention to Africa. In Section II, an overview is provided of the current state of public service delivery in developing countries, focusing primarily on some of the important features of public service delivery. Section III provides a brief overview of the concepts of competition and marketization, placing them in the context of the alternative institutional arrangements available for delivering public services. In Section IV, the paper reviews existing evidence addressing the impact of competition and marketization on the quality of public service provision. Section V looks at some of the key elements in the design of field studies aimed at investigating the effects of competition and marketization on the quality of public service delivery in
Africa. Section VI concludes.”
