African practice and the theory of user fees

The theory which guides the levying of user fees has been constructed in the industrialized world, particularly for application to public utilities. There is a danger that the theory will create dysfunctions as it is applied to new social environments and to new service areas. This paper examines the experience of Kenya with user fees in the agricultural sector in order to identify some of the unforeseen ways in which the actualities of African development diverge from the implicitly Western assumptions of the theory. The conclusion is that user fees have a number of very attractive features for Africa, but that they also have to be applied with care and modification if they are to have their intended positive impact on agricultural services.