enforce them, remains low, with deleterious effects on economic activity. The quality of the public administration also remains low overall: national and subnational core administrations in African countries tend to perform poorly, including in terms of managing their own operations, or ensuring quality in policy implementation and regulatory management.

<mark>There are, however, selected examples of effective public administration reform, such as in Rwanda. Rwanda came out of the civil war with an over-bloated and under-skilled civil service, ripe with patronage. Reforms were initiated in 1998 to enhance civil service effectiveness and administrative capacity – with the aim to bolster service delivery and political legitimacy in the post-war era. Key strategies included downsizing the civil service, decentralizing personnel, and implementing transparent, merit-based recruitment processes. Between 1999 and 2009, four downsizing programs were executed, resulting in a more streamlined civil service. Selection criteria were revamped, leading to a significant increase in the proportion of civil servants holding university degrees. Additionally, management tools like imihigo, performance contracts introduced in 2006, fostered a more results-oriented culture and improved accountability from local to central government. The Rwandan experience underscores the significance of political dialogue in navigating contentious reforms, with recruitment reforms stemming from inclusive discussions during the urugwiro dialogue (1998-9). The country's context-specific solutions, such as imihigo, also highlight the value of homegrown approaches to governance. The political ingredients of reform in Rwanda have ambivalent effects, however. The government’s capacity to push reforms and deliver results has been attributed to its authoritarian governance, including top-down decision-making by a presidential strongman. This, however, has been indissociable from the broader context of limited pluralism and repressive politics. In this context, transparency around results can be put in question, as well as the long-term effect on reform sustainability of the sidelining of key accountability mechanisms, including checks and balances from the judiciary or citizen participation.</mark><sup>6</sup> State effectiveness and capacity have been strongly tested by crisis in recent years, including by the COVID pandemic. As illustrated by Figure 5, the COVID crisis has been associated with a decline in the quality of public sector management and institutions, which suffered from the combined pressure of high debt levels, stretched fiscal resources, and increased demands for government interventions. This is true even for relatively better performing areas of the public sector, such as revenue mobilization and budget and financial management whose scores have decreased in recent years. Figure 6 further illustrates the impact of the COVID pandemic on revenue mobilization, with a drop in total taxes (as a percent of GDP) following the crisis.

Overall, efforts to build institutional capacities for revenue mobilization have translated into higher levels of taxation. Notwithstanding the negative impact of the COVID crisis, the level of taxation in SSA has slightly improved over the last twenty years, with total taxes reaching 14.8 percent of GDP in 2020 (Figure

> 6 <mark>For more details on the Rwandan experience, see World Bank. 2019. “Future Drivers of Growth in Rwanda: Innovation, Integration, Agglomeration, and Competition.” Conference Edition. World Bank, Washington, DC.</mark>

10