No continent is in greater need of sustained development than Africa. On the golden independence jubilee of most countries, and almost 54 years after Ghana - the first country on the African continent to achieve independence - sustained development remains elusive. Although not all state-led developmental efforts succeed, hardly any state has ever been successfully transformed through market mechanisms only. With economic development stagnating in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, coupled with the phenomenal success of strongly state-driven accelerated development and industrialisation in Japan and the newly industrialising or 'tiger' economies of East Asia, the role of the state in development is at the fore and has sparked debate on developmental states in Africa. In South Africa, the developmental state concept is attracting attention mainly because of possibilities it offers for tackling challenges associated with transformatio