An appropriate legal and regulatory framework is essential for good government and progress in any country and essential in any private sector development programme. This study describes legal reform programmes in African countries, including an evaluation of such programmes in the post-independence era in civil and common law countries.

Nigeria has for long been regarded as the poster child for the 'curse' of oil wealth. Yet despite this, Nigeria achieved strong economic growth for over a decade in the 21st century, driven largely by policy reforms in non-oil sectors. This open access book argues that Nigeria's major development challenge is not the 'oil curse', but rather one of achieving economic diversification beyond oil, subsistence agriculture, informal activities, and across its subnational entities. Through analysis drawing on economic data, policy documents, and interviews, Usman argues that Nigeria's challenge of economic diversification is situated within the political setting of an unstable distribution of power among individual, group, and institutional actors. Since the turn of the century, policymaking by successive Nigerian governments has, despite superficial partisan differences, been oriented towards short-term crisis management of macroeconomic stabilization, restoring growth and selective public sector reforms. To diversify Nigeria's economy, this book argues that successive governments must reorient towards a consistent focus on pro-productivity and pro-poor policies, alongside comprehensive civil service and security sector overhaul. These policy priorities, Nigeria's ruling elites are belatedly acknowledging, are crucial to achieving economic transformation; a policy shift that requires a confrontation with the roots of perpetual political crisis, and an attempt to stabilize the balance of power towards equity and inclusion. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

This book sheds light on some of the most important policy issues required to put Nigeria on a higher growth path. It highlights the challenges that Nigeria's businesses face today and what government can do to overcome such obstacles.

IFC shares the primary objective of all World Bank Group institutions: to reduce poverty and improve the lives of people in its developing member countries. Since 1956, IFC has committed more than.

UNDP’s Private Sector and Foundations Strategy for the Sustainable Development Goals 2016–2020 defines how UNDP plans to engage with – and work on – sustainable development issues with the private sector and philanthropic foundations. The goal is to enable these actors to become transformative partners in implementing all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to achieve UNDP’s vision of poverty eradication and a reduction in inequalities. The strategy aims to position UNDP as a partner of choice for the private sector and foundations in SDG implementation, while maximizing the impact of the private sector and philanthropy on sustainable development. The target audience for this strategy includes our partners in the private sector and philanthropy as well as UNDP Headquarters units, regional bureaux, regional hubs and country offices that work with the private sector and foundations on development issues. It explains UNDP’s programmatic approach in working directly with the private sector and foundations as well as with other partners involved in development. By engaging the private sector and foundations through this strategy, UNDP can support governments to establish an enabling environment for aligning these stakeholders’ core operations with the SDGs. This strategy is complementary to UNDP’s Green Commodities and Trade Guidance Note, UNDP Guidance Note on Jobs and Livelihoods, UNDP’s Strategy for Supporting Sustainable and Equitable Management of the Extractive Sector for Human Development, International Financial Institutions Partnership Strategy 2016-2020, the Recovery Strategy, UNDP support to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Policy and Programme brief and the Mainstreaming, Acceleration, Policy Support Approach (MAPS) enabling responsive, coherent and inclusive support to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.