PPPs In Africa: Time to Review 20 Years Experimentations

Over the past 20 years, PPP has become a veritable tool for mobilising funds to finance infrastructures in developing countries. There are many recorded cases of success in Asia countries. In Africa, it is a mixed grill of success and failure. I have addressed myself to the reasons for this less-than-average performance in Africa in the past.

James Leigland did a critique on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) entitled: PPPs in Developing Countries: The Emerging Evidence-based Critique. He opined that the G20 meetings over the last several years have increasingly focused on the need for a huge scale-up in infrastructure investment in developing countries, particularly low-income countries. This logic is sound in principle, but weak in implementation, because the global south has not accumulated capital to fuel the infrastructure market. Most African leaders who have access to public treasury have catered away Africa's wealth into safe heaven outside African soil. According to Wikipedia (2024), Mobutu Sese Seko of the Central Democratic Republic of Congo (CDR) amassed a personal fortune estimated to be over US$5B by selling his nation's resources, which is not an isolated case. This has mitigated against infrastructure development in Africa.

Secondly, Infrastructure asset pricing in Africa has a high-risk factor, which makes infrastructure pricing above the global average cost. Added to this are opaque transactional arrangements. To fast-track infrastructure development using PPP models; African nations should adjust standard models to meet Africa-specific local realities. Developing large, regional, or cross-border infrastructure projects involving both public and private investment, which have transformational impacts on entire regions such as ECOWAS countries should take a front-roll seat at regional government meetings.

The G20 has considered efforts to modify the mandates of international development banks so that these institutions will take the lead on such PPPs and crowd in the private sector. However, African nations should recognise that these multilateral agencies are primarily profit-based institutions.

Increasingly, there is a need for regional bodies such as ECOWAS or AU to set up continental agencies to study PPP executions in Africa, note what works, document successful PPP projects such as the Kigali Water PPP Project, and share knowledge among member nations. To fast-track Africa's Infrastructure development using PPP models; Africa should think about Africa and develop their specific toolkit with local intimacy. Bob Marley once stated, that if you don’t know your history, you wouldn’t know where you are coming from. Africa does have a robust history of infrastructure(s) development: The Egyptian pyramids, the Bini Empire discoveries, etc. Often, an ignored fact that civilisation started from Africa (Egypt).

In conclusion, it is not clear that PPPs consistently perform better than well-managed public firms in advanced economies. The evidence suggests that well-run public firms tend to match the performance of private firms in regulated sectors posited James Leigland (2018). PPP experience in Nigeria is somewhat different, with mixed grill performance indicators. There is hope, if we think inward.

Dr Akhator agrees that PPPs can help develop infrastructure in Africa. After 20 years of experimentation, it is time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Connectronics can help where there are real concerns about using new prisms to develop infrastructures in Africa.

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