Overcoming the infrastructure bottleneck in South Africa will boost long-term economic growth that can drive industrialisation, Nelson Mandela University Infrastructure Development and Engagement Unit (ID&EU) associate Bongani Mankewu tells Engineering News.

According to Mankewu, “there is a need for the development of a project preparation methodology or model framework for public-private partnership- (PPP-) driven infrastructure projects in South Africa”.

He further explains that the pipeline of investable projects will allow large investors to commit a greater share of their financial resources to infrastructure development in Africa and South Africa.

As such, he states that the South African government’s announcement of a “project preparation facility” responded to an acknowledgement that weak project preparation, planning and execution had resulted in lengthy delays, as well as over- and underspending and problems with quality.

“Project preparation and structuring (also known as downstream activities) is a crucial phase and it includes identifying a project, evaluating the project’s economic and financial feasibility, allocating risk between the public and private sector, and finally implementing the project,” he highlights.

The phase of project preparation influences the governance of the project, with emphasis on a focused framework, difficulties with which can be attributed to a problem at agencies, deficient transaction cost economics, poor project design, as well as inefficiency of project contracts, according to Mankewu.

As such, he laments that risk misallocation is “often at the centre of renegotiation processes”, which suggests “a poor project preparation and deficient value-for-money assessment, together with incomplete contracts or regulatory weaknesses” – all of these factors significantly alter the desired project results.