The African Project Failure Syndrome: The Conundrum of Project Management Knowledge Base—The Case of SADC

Abstract

The authors assess the adequacy of the content of current graduate programs in project management offered in Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries to verify their sufficiency in training competent project managers. They adopted the findings of a previous study that identified project management themes critical for inclusion in the curricula of graduate programs. Detailed contents of graduate programs were solicited from SADC countries that offer project management for analysis. Of the seven programs analyzed, only one was considered moderately adequate as according to the defined measurement. Most of the programs lacked an adequate exploitation of the so-called “soft issues” relating to project management. The value of the article is two-fold. First, it emphasizes that having a competent project manager begins with the development of appropriate inputs to the training process. Second, the results of the article provide an indication of a prevalent gap in the programs analyzed.

Key words:

• competence
• programs
• project management
• project managers
• SADC
• training

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to express our sincere appreciation to the editors of this special issue and the anonymous referees for their constructive comments and focused suggestions. The remaining errors are the authors'.

Notes

Note. PMCK = project management coal-face knowledge, WBS = work breakdown structure, CPM = critical path method, PERT = program evaluation & review technique, PPP = public private partnership, PFI = private finance initiative.

PMCK1 + PMCK2 + PMCK3 + PMCK4 + PMCK5 + PMCK6 + EPMK = 700%.