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How do public procurement practices influence effective public financial management (PFM) in Africa? Notwithstanding the several public procurement reforms to improve PFM in Africa, outcomes have not been sustainable. Prior studies have failed to explain this phenomenon. With a descriptive case study design based on comprehensive datasets, this paper explains this situation with three key factors underlying the public procurement environment in three African countries: Ethiopia, Central African Republic, and Ghana. From the agency theory lenses, these factors affect the agency cost in public administrative systems necessary for addressing the agency problems in public procurement management towards desired PFM outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how innovative skills and knowledge are transmitted and acquired among adolescents in two hunter-gatherer communities, the Aka of southern Central African Republic and the Chabu of southwestern Ethiopia. Modes of transmission and processes of social learning are addressed. Innovation as well as social learning have been hypothesized to be key features of human cumulative culture, enhancing the fitness and survival of individuals in diverse environments. The innovation literature indicates adult males are more innovative than children and female adults and therefore predicts that adolescents will seek out adult males. Further, the mode of transmission should be oblique (i.e., learning from adults other than parents). Thus, learning of innovations should be oblique or horizontal rather than vertical, with adolescents paying particular attention to "successful" innovative individuals (prestige bias). The social learning literature indicates that complex skills or knowledge is likely to be learned through teaching, and therefore that teaching will be an important process in the transmission of innovations. In-depth and semi-structured interviews, informal observations, and systematic free-listing were used to evaluate these hypotheses. The study found that (1) cultural context patterned whether or not adolescents sought out adult male or female innovators; (2) oblique modes of transmission were mentioned with greater frequency than horizontal or vertical modes; (3) knowledge and skill bias was notable and explicitly linked by the adolescents to reproductive effort; and (4) teaching was biased toward same-sex individuals and was an important but not an exclusive means of transmitting complex skills and social knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]