Technology

How PPP project model could be more impactful

ppp

Standard gauge Railway (SGR). FILE PHOTO | NMG

We have ambitious goals as a country, we always have. Many of these goals are tied to the electoral process riding on what is often a boatload of promises by charismatic leaders to the wide-eyed and every hopeful electorate. Granted, we do secure funding for these projects and often have something to show for it at the end of it, and therefore we must by all means continue in the pursuit of our national aspirations whether packaged as Vision 2030, or the Big Four Agenda.

One of the ways that government meets its developmental obligations is through the infamous Public Private Partnership model that is funded by international development organisations and others. The model is infamous due to the terms that many agreements carry and the potential for abuse to entrench corrupt practices in the different ways that it manifests, but that discussion is for another day.

Vision 2030 and the Big Four Agenda carry with them the requirement of both "hardware" and “software” infrastructure at scale. On hardware, I refer to the physical infrastructure that needs to be in place, such as roads, ports, rail systems, electrical grids, et cetera. The hardware often requires competencies that we may not have in the country and the nature of such projects is that once laid out, it will be decades before they need to be redone or upgraded. I therefore feel it is okay to have the baseline knowledge transfer and the 30 percent local content rule apply for these.

On the software side however, we must take a different approach to things as a country, where we make deliberate effort to have citizen contractors - a patriotic notch higher than local contractors - design, build and deploy the infrastructure and software platform that will run and manage daily operations.

It will be a zero-sum game if we allowed end-to-end solution provision tied to external funding to be handled by third parties who have no other agenda outside of their commercial interests. We must actively develop these competencies even as we continue to upgrade our tertiary institution curricula plus tooling to produce ready talent for the workplace that will be tasked with running and maintaining these platforms.

If we are to develop and become dominant in solution provision that leverages current and emerging technology we must use our pain points as a learning opportunity. When we build out these critical technology platforms to meet our own needs, we can afterwards look outward to other markets in Africa and beyond in need of the same.

We have been used as a petri-dish by so many for so long and we need to turn the tables and begin to realise the full value of innovations to exploit the nascent opportunities in our country.

Njihia is the Head of Business and Partnerships at Sure Corporation | www.mbuguanjihia.com