A Comprehensive Theory of Corporate Governance Failure in African State-Owned Enterprises: Insights from Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya

This dissertation develops a comprehensive theory of corporate governance failure in African state-owned enterprises, drawing comparative insights from Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. Governance failure in state-owned enterprises across sub-Saharan Africa has been extensively documented but inadequately theorised, with existing explanations predominantly focusing on individual corruption acts or resource constraints rather than systemic governance architecture failures. Drawing on institutional theory, corruption governance literature, the political settlements framework, and public enterprise reform scholarship, this study develops an original Systemic Governance Failure Model that identifies five interacting failure mechanisms: principal multiplicity conflicts, accountability architecture fragmentation, political appointment capture, performance measurement deficiencies, and disclosure environment insufficiency. The model is empirically grounded through comparative case study analysis of twelve state enterprises across the three countries, combining document analysis of audit reports, regulatory reviews, and governance assessments with sixty semi-structured interviews with current and former enterprise board members, government officials, and international development finance institution representatives. The Nigerian cases draw primarily from energy sector parastatals and infrastructure agencies. Cross-national comparative analysis identifies common failure patterns and context-specific variations. The study makes an original theoretical contribution by proposing a systems-level governance failure model applicable across African institutional contexts and generates policy propositions for governance architecture reform. Keywords: governance failure, state-owned enterprises, Africa, systemic governance model, comparative analysis.