Family Ethical Formation and Good Governance for Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Kenyan Illustration

Abstract

Structural and institutional reforms undertaken across Sub-Saharan Africa since the 1980s have consistently failed to translate into the good governance that sustainable development requires. This is a puzzle that has occupied governance scholars for decades without ever quite being resolved. This article's principal contribution is a conceptual model explaining how family-level moral socialization can produce either civic-oriented institutional integrity or particularistic patronage, depending on the direction in which family trust is transferred. Drawing on a critical integrative literature review across institutional theory, virtue ethics, the capability approach, and African communitarian ethics, we argue that institutions require morally formed agents to function as intended. Such formation begins substantially within the family, and that its civic or particularistic orientation, rather than its mere presence, determines whether it strengthens or subverts governance. The model is illustrated through Kenya's post-2010 constitutional devolution. In it far-reaching institutional redesign coexisted with the persistence of clan and kinship-based patronage in county-level procurement and service delivery. Four propositions are advanced for future empirical testing. Furthermore, we conclude that good governance, properly understood, is a precondition for sustainable development rather than an end in itself. It requires attention to both institutional design and the moral formation of the people who inhabit institutions.