As we prepared to wrap up this book and send all the chapters to our publisher, I had the chance to travel to Africa to test, with a group of local scholars and policy makers, the central argument: that underlying the diversity of forms of organizing set up to develop basic infrastructure and in this way promote socio-economic development lies a duality of building institutions and building technology – two desirable objectives with underlying design attributes that make them organisationally incompatible. The setting was the city of Livingstone, a stone’s throw from the majestic Victoria Falls – two places charged with references to a bygone Western colonial era which, for good and for ill, is part of Africa’s history.

Against the backdrop of an increasing demand for efficient, effective and sustainable new infrastructure developments in Africa, this study examines two rapid railway transportation projects to explore alternative ways of organising. The analysis focuses on the Gautrain railway system in South Africa and the Addis Ababa City Light Rail Transit (AA-LRT) system in Ethiopia. Adopting a comparative approach, we investigate how the two capital-intensive project organisations succeeded in overcoming system bottlenecks, and in dealing with complex interfaces with the institutional environment. Our focus is on the structures designed by the project promoter to acquire the necessary formal resources – finance, human capital, certification and land – and to manage the interdependency with the environment. We also investigate the extent to which the developments succeeded in creating broad value beyond the private value appropriated by the private firms involved in design, construction and operations. In agreement with organisation design literature, our analysis suggests the design of the governance structures is directly influenced by the political and sociocultural environment. Therefore, we argue, designing project organisations to deliver infrastructure in Africa is not a problem with a one-size-fits-all solution.

The upgrading of informal urban areas is a pressing challenge for meeting the UN’s goal to make cities a pathway to sustainable development. Complicating co-ordinated collective action is the diffusion of decision-making authority and control over critical resources in a context where there is a shortfall of institutions. Tackling this grand challenge thus requires designing inter-organisational contexts capable of navigating many institutional voids, including ill-defined property rights, weak regulation and inefficient markets. In this chapter, we draw on a case study of a development project that granted decision rights to the poor to upgrade Cairo’s ‘garbage cities’ to further our understanding of this organisational challenge. Our aim is to illuminate a form of organising that is neglected in management scholarship. Its main attribute is the way by which contractual governance is supplemented with a consensus-oriented collective-action structure. Our main contribution is to theorise a trade-off central to this form of organising: collective action, under the shadow of contractual governance, economises on the high transaction costs that would otherwise be incurred to resolve ill-defined property rights. However, enfranchising the poor brings into the organisational boundaries the costs of collective action and risk of a tragedy of the commons.

Regional electricity systems, or power pools, can reduce the cost of providing electricity and improve system reliability through co-ordinated use of energy resources. Realizing these benefits requires a strong political will to co-operate combined with careful market design supported by technical, economic and institutional analysis. In this chapter, we present some of the unique motivations for power pools in Africa, describe the current status of pooling arrangements on the continent, study in detail the regulation of transmission in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) and identify some improvements to the present rules. Our approach combines mathematical modelling of the SAPP system using linear programming with analysis of regional institutions and their role in promoting efficient investments as well as efficient market behaviour. We have investigated several market-design questions, such as how to identify, implement and allocate costs for necessary regional transmission investments. Our regulatory proposals developed for the SAPP could be feasible options for other regional systems in Africa that face similar institutional and technical challenges in developing regional infrastructure.

In this chapter we set out to consider what is needed to ensure that Africa’s infrastructure remains financially sustainable throughout its life cycle. Managing the operational phase is at least, if not more, crucial than ensuring a project is constructed in the first place, but evaluation, particularly in relation to affordability, is weak even at the global level. We identify that in Africa there are frequently weak systems of governance, fragile and risky political institutions and lack of financial management capacity. We empirically examine five Ghanaian projects in electricity generation, water desalination, and the use of private finance to deliver and operate university buildings, to demonstrate financial and accountability shortcomings. We identify four methods that could improve financial sustainability for African infrastructure projects: namely, the establishment of independent infrastructure agencies; training and salary support of competent government technical staff; a move to more transparent decision-making; and the introduction of project monitoring and contingency planning.

In 1998 South Africa signalled its intent to pursue a far-reaching agenda of electricity-sector reform. This chapter explores the political challenges of moving from vision to action – with a focus on decision-making vis-à-vis reforming  the market structure for electricity generation, and setting prices for purchases from electricity generation providers. Whilst on the surface the reforms were supported by government, beneath that surface were many unresolved conflicts amongst stakeholders. The result was six years of reform churning – at a time when forward progress with investment in new electricity generation capacity was required. The analysis offers a cautionary tale as to the unintended consequences of embracing far-reaching policy reform proposals without any clarity as to how they might be implemented.

This chapter illustrates how the impulse of Chinese financing and contractors on the delivery of infrastructure megaprojects has given a different development option to African governments. I ground the findings on a detailed study of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) built by Kenya, with Chinese assistance, between 2014 and 2017. The project was originally turned down by traditional lenders (the World Bank) based on a narrow cost–benefit analysis. I trace the ability of the Kenyan–Chinese project organisation to navigate the institutional voids in the environment, and rivalry between neighbouring countries, through a powerful and centralised organisation structure. I also show, though, that the detachment of this hierarchical authority from the institutional environment comes with a real cost that imperils the potential of the project organisation to catalyse broader socio-economic growth. Still, the case suggests that a centralised approach delivers outcomes for a reasonable cost. It effectively builds an option for further future development. This, I argue, makes the Chinese approach a viable alternative to the inclusive institutional approach espoused by traditional lenders.

This book starts from the idea that much can be learned about the design of new forms of organising, theoretically and empirically, by examining a phenomenon central to the global order: Africa’s struggle to bridge a growing gap between supply and demand for basic infrastructure. A gap linked, amongst other factors, to the rapid growth of the continent’s population, projected to reach 40 per cent of the world’s population by 2100.1 Infrastructure is a vast class of capital-intensive technologies that input into a wide range of productive processes that generate positive externalities and social surplus.

Egypt’s population of 96 million is expected to double within the next twenty to thirty years. Given that Egypt has failed to meet a continuous increase in housing demand since the 1950s, there has been an expansion of informal housing, informal adaptation of formal housing and informal mixing of residential and non-residential uses. Whilst informal interventions may allow better access to affordable housing, they do not abide by building codes or regulations; thus, they burden existing infrastructure, and negatively affect the physical and psychological well-being of society.

This chapter investigates the potential for a dynamic response to a society’s changing housing needs. A case study in an informal area of the Greater Cairo Region (GCR) sought to define means of informal interventions in order to capitalize on lessons learned, and to inform future mainstream housing developments in Egypt.

It concludes that a proactive flexible and adaptable mixed-use housing model may help respond to the socio-economic and demographic dynamics of households. However, the compatibility of non-residential activities requires investigation, and any necessary measures taken before mixing with residential. This model also anticipates a reduction in commuting, which would alleviate traffic congestion and strengthen community ties.