Drivers of Road Sector Public-Private Partnership Adoption in New and Inexperienced Markets

Newly emerging (inexperienced) public-private partnership (PPP) markets require private sector participation to change the current situation in which governments are the only entity responsible for funding and supporting infrastructure projects. The decision to implement a PPP approach in an inexperienced market requires identification of potential PPP solutions to mitigate the problems associated with the public delivery of road projects. However, this issue of identification has not been addressed in previous studies. Therefore, the present study aims to develop a framework that identifies potential PPP solutions to public delivery problems. To address this issue, documents that provide first-hand PPP experiences were collected from five toll roads and bridge projects in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Cote d'Ivoire. Furthermore, the authors conducted interviews with the key stakeholders of toll road projects in Ethiopia—a newly emerging, inexperienced PPP market. The resulting data were analyzed to explore the potential drivers of PPP adoption through a concept-mapping technique, along with case study aggregation. Based on the findings, a framework was developed that consisted of nine PPP-associated factors acting as a solution to 12 public delivery-associated problems. The results demonstrate that fostering economic development with the help of the private sector to raise project financing and constructing roads that can ease traffic congestion are the main potential drivers of PPP implementation in inexperienced PPP markets. This reveals that PPP implementation motives in the inexperienced PPP markets of developing countries are different from the motives in the experienced PPP markets of developing countries. The study findings would help inexperienced PPP markets to find PPP solutions to the problems associated with public delivery.