RETHINKING STRATEGY IN THE QUEST FOR AFRICAN STATE CAPACITY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

The imperative of governing human systems, with all its complex uncertainties depends on reflection and maneuver to contain the likely disruptive effects of contingent events. In this quest, rules-based regimes (institutions), which are designed with a logic of certainty and predictability operate in potentially chaotic contexts with reference to limited information; a tendency which may render the pursuit of rational courses of action an exception rather than the norm. More often than not, interventions to govern human systems count as actions in ?muddling through? processes in contexts characterized by flux (Lindblom, 1979). With this tendency, there is no guarantee that governance systems will operate to the optimum. Indeed, it is to be expected that governance institutions stand a great risk of being contextually unhinged and out of sync, with deeper undercurrents, governing that which energizes transformations, the transactions of constituencies, and the determinants of adaption/reactions to contain the disruptions inherent in risks. Being so, uncertainty is a deep-seated structural formation which does not lend itself to mundane, short term management options. The latter may be effective only when they are engineered to mimic the dynamics of structural uncertainty.