Reforming Africa’s public sector has been on the agenda of African governments and their development partners for decades and yet the problem persists. This failure can be attributed to two related factors: solutions to the ‘African public sector problem’ have been dictated by external interests, and the policies have ignored the experiences of organizations within those countries. This article contributes to the search for effective reform policies by making the case for inclusion of the experiences of organizations within each country. Using the concept of organizational culture as a framework, I propose an approach based on the following claims: In every country there are some public organizations that perform relatively well, given their constraints; there is the need to understand why and how there are poor and good performing organizations within the same country; and information from such analysis should form the basis of public sector reform policies. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated with a study of Ghana.
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