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.

This inductive study proposes a duality in the design of organisations set up to pursue socio-economic development. Dualities exist when organisations pursue objectives that are jointly desirable, but difficult to reconcile. We ground the research on a sample of inter-organisational contexts set up to pursue development by way of improving basic transport infrastructure in two of Africa’s fast-growing cities, Lagos (Nigeria) and Kampala (Uganda). Our findings reveal sharp variation in the way two desirable objectives are prioritised: to build capital public goods and build the local institutions. When the institutional intermediary that brokers resource exchanges is a ‘traditional’ development agency, e.g. the World Bank, the focus is on building institutions.

In this chapter we advance the argument that regulatory policies can have a far-reaching impact on the organizational capabilities and, ultimately, on the performance of public utilities. Once capabilities are lost, it may be hard to regain them in the short term. Our insights are based on a qualitative-comparative analysis of capability-losing processes at Eskom, South Africa’s national electric utility. South Africa experienced severe power outages between 2005 and 2008, which are commonly explained as having been caused by inadequate generation capacity, badly maintained power plants and insufficient coal supply. In this chapter, we go a step further and examine the underlying reasons at the organizational level. We show that a variety of new regulations led to a substantial loss of critical competences and skills at Eskom. This caused a deterioration of planning, operation and maintenance procedures, and made swift reactions to the crisis difficult. The ‘capability perspective’ presented in this chapter complements traditional theoretical explanations of utility and sector performance.

Many governments in Africa are establishing public–private partnerships (PPPs) to provide healthcare infrastructure and services. We know very little about how healthcare PPPs are planned and implemented in Africa, and even less about the associated outcomes. This paper begins to address this gap through a detailed case study of an innovative, ambitious and complex partnership contract in Maseru, Lesotho. The scheme has been labelled ‘the future of healthcare delivery on the African continent’ and encompasses the design, build, partial financing and full operation of a new hospital facility alongside a wide range of core clinical services. This chapter draws on documentary data to evaluate the main features of the contract, the procurement process and monitoring arrangements and the outcomes in terms of benefits and costs. A key finding is that payments to the private operator are far higher than was expected pre-contractually, and have become a major source of budgetary uncertainty, as well as a demanding call on government’s healthcare resources. We conclude that successful social infrastructure PPPs in Africa will require considerable investments in contract management skills, strong budgeting institutions and mechanisms, and enhanced (and more independent) scrutiny of plans and forecasts of financial impacts.