Middle East, African governments increasingly looking to PPPs to improve public services

By eGovInnovation Editors | Aug 14, 2011

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DUBAI - Governments across the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are increasingly looking to utilize public-private partnerships (PPPs) to gain efficiencies, mobilize additional resources, and extend services to their citizens, residents, and visitors, according to the latest research from International Data Corporation (IDC).

IDC said such partnerships are proving popular not only in the traditional fields of mega-infrastructure projects such as roads and mass transit systems, but also as an alternate means of expanding and enhancing the delivery of services, modernizing education and healthcare systems, and increasing the availability and diffusion of ICT, without necessarily having to directly allocate capital expenditure to such initiatives.

"Across the region, various PPP initiatives are being undertaken by private ICT players, with the support of the respective governments, to build infrastructure and deliver services across the judiciary, transportation, education, and healthcare sectors," said Mukesh Chulani, senior research analyst the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey at IDC Government Insights.

Coming from a backdrop where public capital was the sole source of funding for social amenities and infrastructure, and where governments designed, built, maintained, and operated various entities, there are now successful and innovative PPP examples within the MEA region that have had a demonstrable impact while shifting more risk to the private sector. 

In IDC Government Insights' report, 'Public-Private Partnerships: Examples of Successful Technology Collaboration in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa', Chulani highlighted the case of the 'SMS for Life' project in Tanzania, which is an ongoing collaboration to improve the management of anti-malarial medication inventory levels that is led by Novartis in conjunction with IBM, Vodafone, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, and the Tanzanian government's National Malaria Control Program.

Launched in September 2009, the SMS for Life project was first implemented as a pilot in three rural districts in Tanzania, covering 129 health facilities and a total population of approximately 1.2 million people. Over a period of five months, the system effectively provided information on the inventory levels of anti-malarial treatments, leading to a more efficient supply chain and a 300 percent improvement in the availability of such medication.

The pilot that the project is now being rolled out nationwide to cover 5,000 health facilities and a population of more than 40 million people, while Kenya and Ghana are set to implement trials of their own based on the same technology.