Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) as a public procurement route involves delivering a public asset and/or service with considerable involvement of a private sector supplier or conglomerate, which could range from designing, financing, construction, operation and/or management of the project, usually over a long period of time, and with significant transfer of risks to the private sector. While there exists a campaign for an increased use of PPPs to bridge the infrastructure funding gap across Africa in general and the CEMAC zone in particular, given the curtailed government resources and restricted fiscal space, little has been said or done to ensure that PPPs marry the agenda 2030 objectives. This thesis explores the usage of PPPs as a vehicle for sustainable infrastructure development in the CEMAC zone. It is the first comprehensive academic study to fully investigate the legal and institutional frameworks of PPPs as a public procurement route in the CEMAC zone with the goal of identifying the strengths, weakness, and opportunities for each one, prior to proposing Critical Success Factors (CSFs) project delivery. This thesis equally examines the dilemmatic relationship between infrastructure procurement which stands out as a major source of environmental degradation, and the realisation of sustainable development. It establishes that though the pursuit of this binary objective appears to be adversarial at face value, however, both can be conjointly achieved where there exist coherent legal, policy, regulatory and institutional frameworks. It also examines the PPP frameworks in place in the CEMAC zone, prior to identifying merits of a proposed regional framework for PPPs by drawing comparisons to the systems in place within the other sub-regional blocs in Africa. The establishment of a regional directive will go a long way towards facilitating regional integration through transborder projects, and has the potential of developing the practice in Member States with less adequate procurement systems, given the influence of regional acts on domestic legislation. Finally, an Ecosystem First PPPs concept characterised by a Whole Life Cycle (WLC) approach which imbeds the notions of intra-generational and intergenerational equity, is proposed to encourage the Member States of the said sub-region to shift from solely economic motivated procurement decisions, to a more comprehensive approach which will include social and environmental considerations.
- Central Africa
- Public Procurement
- Public-Private Partnerships (PPP)
- Sustainability
- Infrastructure
A Human Touch to Public-Private Partnerships for Sustainable Infrastructure Development in the Central African sub-region
Bechem, E. E. (Author). 1 Aug 2023
Student thesis: Phd