Structural Reform of the Veterinary Profession in Africa and the New Institutional Economics

This article reviews a number of critical issues in the structural reform of animal health services in Africa. Using the New Institutional Economics, it highlights several problems that others concerned with the privatization of this service area have tended to neglect. Most notably it calls attention to: (1) the need to retain a central role for paraprofessionals in the new delivery system; (2) the desirability of competition between the veterinary and para-veterinary professions; (3) the importance of developing state contracting procedures for assisting the private delivery of animal health that will avoid the problems of local monopoly; and (4) the central role that new and strengthened professional associations will have to play in this area if collective goods and the public interest are to be served. The article's larger purpose is to demonstrate that the New Institutional Economics has a great deal to contribute to the older precepts of neo-classical economics in anticipating and thinking through the fundamental changes that privatization of professional services in Africa are posing. In this sense it is a first step in a larger programme of empirical and theoretical research.