Developing Transport Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa through Public–Private Partnerships: Policy Practice and Implications

Abstract

In contemporary times, Public–Private Partnership (PPP) in transport infrastructure has gained considerable attention in developing regions following its success in the developed countries. However, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is among the developing regions with few transport PPP projects and among the regions with high number of failed projects. Meanwhile the region's transport infrastructure need far exceeds it current provision. This paper therefore aims to examine the project experiences (success and failure factors) of three highly profiled transport PPP projects, namely the Lekki toll road concession project (Nigeria), N4 toll road (South Africa/Mozambique) and Port of Maputo (Mozambique) in order to develop policy measures for effective future implementation. The experiences of the three projects show that transport PPP policy is indeed feasible in SSA. However, to realise its full applicability, proper policy actions and measures must be carefully observed and these include effective and efficient stakeholder management, transparent and competitive tendering process, high participation of local investors, stable macro-economic conditions and strong government commitment and regulatory framework. The projects experiences and policy actions developed are impactful in accelerating transport infrastructure development through PPP approach in SSA. Hence it is hoped that policy-makers and practitioners would be informed on the key strategies to employ in implementing future projects.

Keywords:

• Public–Private partnership
• transport infrastructure
• review
• case study
• Sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements

Authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments in revising the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This paper forms part of a Ph.D. research project entitled “A best practice framework for PPP implementation for infrastructure development in Ghana,” which is fully supported by the Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) from the Research Grants Council (RGC) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.