Index

Abstract

African countries have joined other continents across the globe to embrace e-governance as a strategy to provide with ease public services to her citizens. The quest for e-governance stems from the fact that the traditional means of providing public services have not yielded the utmost results needed. Thus, the earnest desires to use electronic means to provide public services for Africans. Making available these services effectively using ICTs demands the existence of some critical success factors. One of these factors to successfully accomplish the goals of e-governance projects is funding. However, e-governance projects are highly capital intensive and hence, often knotty for governments to foot the expenditures through the normal annual operating expenditure (budget). Financing e-governance using the normal annual budgetary approach rarely guarantees solid funding. In view of the global financial and economic crisis facing many countries which have actually affected their budget execution, most government the world over have resorted to financing e-governance using several alternatives such as public private partnership (PPP). Although, no robust statistical analysis was done as the article relied qualitative approach with emphasis on archival analysis of relevant literature on the subject matter and inferences drawn from it. This paper infers from the documentary analysis that PPP has numerous potential gains to cushion the effects of the financial and economic crisis and that it is capable of making the implementation of e-governance projects a reality in African. However, the paper also reveals that despite its viability as an alternative measure to financing e-governance projects in Africa just as obtainable in other climes, it is imperative to address some latent limitations of PPP in order to seamlessly enhance its implementation in e-governance projects in Africa.

Keywords: Public-Private, Partnership, E-governance, E-government, Funding, Africa.

Received: 28 June 2018 / Revised: 31 July 2018 / Accepted: 3 September 2018/ Published: 8 October 2018

Contribution/ Originality

The paper is one of the few studies that investigated how public-private partnership was used to finance e-governance projects in some selected African countries.


1. INTRODUCTION

Towards delivering effective services to the citizens has become the goal of most governments in the African continent. This, perhaps, has been prompted by the fact that citizens as tax payers deserve value for their money coupled with the constitutional provision that government should provide for the welfare of her citizens (Barnett, 2003). Achieving this goal has put government of many African countries on their toes. Consequently, several strategies have been explored and more exploration still being carried out to transform governmental processes in service provisioning. Eventually, it has been recognised that the modes of service delivery of most countries in Africa are too traditional and not trending with innovative development strategies obtainable in other continents of the world. Evidently, there has been a consistent failure of African governments to provide adequate services to their people (Farlam, 2005). The failure is not unconnected with the inability to adopt innovative measures that will aid the  effective delivery of services to the people.
One of the innovative measures that has received attention in the world economy for delivering effective service is electronic-governance, which is shortened as e-governance. E-governance means the use of information and communication technology to deliver services. Over the years, this measure has been applied to provide services to people in nation states. It has been embraced by countries because of some perceived advantages such as enhancing transparency, accountability, accuracy, reduction in time wastage and fraud among others in the process of service delivery.

However, it has been realised that effective implementation of e-governance, especially in most Africans countries has been thwarted by so many factors. Prominent among these factors has been the inability to employ appropriate development finance model. In view of this, countries across the globe, not only Africa have devised alternative funding strategies besides the in-house resources taking into consideration the current global financial and economic crisis. Fundamental among these strategies is the public-private partnership which has recorded monumental success in many countries of the world.  This paper argues in favour of this approach, particularly because of the inherent and promising gains in adopting it and the practical proof of its success in many places. Yet the paper submits as well that there are challenges capable of thwarting its success if not tackled. This study becomes important on the ground that while African countries have been successfully employing PPP models in other sectors such as water, energy and transportation, their application to the ICT and e-government sector is relatively new. Therefore, this study will be an eye opener as it brings forth strengths and weaknesses of the development finance model and draws lessons for African continents to improve on their weaknesses.

2. METHODOLOGY

The study used a qualitative approach as it conducts a systematic scan of literature to identify studies that inform our understanding of e-government, public-private partnership, ppp in e-government in Africa. The foregoing relevant key words were identified and employed in searches of repository libraries of research materials like books, journals, etc. The general approach taken was to collect as much literature as possible that focused on ppp, e-governance as well as ppp in e-governance and analysed them such that the discussion that follows draws on findings from this theoretical research. In order to adequately cover all axes in African continents, countries were selected from all the cardinal points each as in the table below. These countries were purposively selected.

 Region  
Countries 
Central Africa  
Angola and  Gabon
Northern Africa 
Egypt 
West Africa 
Nigeria, Ghana
East Africa 
Mauritius, Seychelles  and Kenya
Southern Africa 
South Africa and Lesotho 

Source: Authors’ Construct, 2017

3. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

Case Studies are not well documented: E-Government is relatively new, and the use of PPP for e-government is even newer, leaving inadequate time to assess whether or not the e-government PPP initiatives have been “successful.” For example, the useful website, E-government News (www.egovnews.org), which includes reports on e-government projects launched through PPP models, has only been operational since January 2006 (Emilio, 2015). Apart from the foregoing, informative material on PPP in E-Government is sparse. While there are countless articles, websites, and projects dedicated to dispersing excellent didactic material on public-private partnerships, their application is largely confined to the physical infrastructure sectors.

4. CONCEPTUAL REVIEW

Public-Private Partnership: Public-private partnership has become a popular concept in the domain of public administration in recent times because of the promises it holds towards effective service delivery in the public sector. As a concept it has received several definitions from scholars. The Institute of Public Private Partnership (2009) defines it as contracts between a private sector entity and a government body that call for the private partner to deliver a desired service and assume the associated risks. In this arrangement according the Public-Private institute, government is relieved of the financial and administrative burden of providing the service, but retains an important role in regulating and monitoring the performance of the private partner. Historically, The Public-Private Institute claimed that the idea of PPP was initiated out of the government need for financing to meet increasing demand for expansion and rehabilitation of physical infrastructure such as roads, energy facilities, water and sanitation networks.

For Abiola and Adebayo (2011) PPP can be described as a government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies. One of the critical elements of this definition just like the foregoing is the issue of funding. But this definition varies from the first one on the ground that the author did not specify whether the financial burden is borne wholly by the government or the private partners. However, somewhere in the course of their discussion in the paper, they acknowledged that there are different versions of PPP. The authors claimed that in some types the financial burden is borne exclusively by the users of the services and not the tax payers. In some other types, capital investment is made by the private sector on the strength of a contract with the government to provide agreed services and the cost of providing the service is borne wholly or in part by the government. In which ever form it may take according to the authors, the objectives of the PPP are to; contribute to the economic integration, accelerates economic growth and sustainable development, engenders and sustains private sector participation (PSP) in traditionally public sector projects, and expands local access to international markets.
Farlam (2005) defines PPP as a contract between a public sector institution and a private party, in which the private party assumes substantial financial, technical and operational risk in the design, financing, building and operation of a project. Farlam identified two specific types of PPP, namely, a situation where the private party performs a function usually carried out by government, such as providing water or maintaining a road; or where the private party acquires the use of state property for its own commercial purposes; or a hybrid of the two. Payment could involve the institution paying the private party for the delivery of the service; or the private party collecting fees or charges from users of the service; or a combination of these.

Emerging characteristics of PPP adapted from Asian Development Bank () and which also reflect features of  definitions presented above are that: PPP is a contractual agreement defining the roles and responsibilities of the parties, sensible risk-sharing among the public and the private sector partners, and financial rewards to the private party commensurate with the achievement of pre-specified outputs. The motivations for engaging in PPP irrespective of any form it may take could be to: attract private capital investment (often to either supplement public resources or release them for other public needs); increase efficiency and use available resources more effectively; and reform sectors through a reallocation of roles, incentives, and accountability. In specific term, the goal ppp according to Emilio (2015).

  1. Mobilize new private sector investment in order to leverage public funds required in the development of e-government networks, including both underlying information and communications technology infrastructure and equipment, as well as the public services being delivered on these networks;
  2. Attract private sector experience, technology, and innovation in the design of electronic networks and services, and to benefit from private sector creativeness and ingenuity; and
  3. Utilize private sector marketing channels and customer service expertise in the commercial delivery of services to customers of the e-government system.

E-governance: E-governance is a crucial phase in the development of government process. It is defined as a continuous process of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to serve citizens and improve their interaction with the state (Fitsili et al., 2009). In the same vein, Singh and Sharma (2009) defines e-governance as the public sector's use of information and communication technologies with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent and effective. According World Bank (2001) e-governance is the government owned or operated systems of information and communication technologies that transform relations with citizens, the private sector and/or other government agencies so as to promote citizens’ empowerment, improve service delivery, strengthen accountability, increase transparency, or improve government efficiency. It can also be seen as the use and application of information technologies in public administration to streamline and integrate workflows and processes, to effectively manage data and information, enhance public service delivery, as well as expand communication channels for engagement and empowerment of people (United Nations, 2014).

The primary aim of ensuring the application of e-governance in the affairs of the state as can be seen in the above definitions is to promote good governance which is characterized by equality, partaking in the democratic process, transparency, and accountability in the various sector of the nations’ economy. Other objectives of e-governance are; ensuring the provision of adequate information to citizens, improving efficiency in administrative processes and ensuring availability of public services (stress-free access to government services). Ronaghan (2002) asserts that E-government has potential for stronger institutional capacity building, for better service delivery to citizens and business, for reducing corruption by increasing transparency and social control.

Despite the opportunities it offers, it is faced with challenges such as limited and unequal access to ICTs, lack of infrastructure, electronic fraud, and the absence of or inadequate legal frameworks as well as funding (UNDP, 2009).

4.1. PPP in E-Governance

A Public-Private Partnership in e-Government according to Emilio (2015) may be defined as a legally enforceable contract between a private sector entity and a government body that requires the private partner to deliver a desired  electronic public service, for which the private sector must invest some of its own resources (financial, technological, time, corporate reputation, etc.), and must become responsible for some of the risks of service delivery, and for which payments to the private partner are made only in exchange for actual performance delivered. From the foregoing definition by Emilio, PPP in e-governance is inherently associated with different types of risks. These are commercial risks which are allocated to the private partners, political risks allocated to the public sector partner and the third categories which may not fit into the preceding two discussed and are allocated to both private and public partners on the basis of negotiations.

It is widely accepted that go-it-alone ICT/e-government strategies are costly and have not achieved the desired levels of performance or transformation desired by governments (Langford and Harrison, 2001). PPP is employed in e-governance because e-Government projects are normally large in scale and magnitude of operations and require not only a huge amount of resources but also a multidisciplinary skill. Hence, it becomes difficult at times for the government to handle the projects completely with its own resources. It then necessitates/prompts the governments to get into partnerships to leverage on the strengths and resources of its partners. These collaborations or partnerships can be built up with the private sector as well as the other stakeholders in the process of e-government including the NGOs (UNESCO, 2005). Partnership with the various stakeholders for e-government initiatives according to UNESCO (2005) can be in many areas such as the following: financial investment, infrastructure setup, solution architecture and technology selection,  content development and management, rendering front-end services to the citizens, citizen relationship management (CIRM), roll-out of e-government projects (nationwide/regionwide), software development, project management and assessment, capacity building etc. There are different models of ppp Emilio (2015); IPPP (2009). The main types in e-government model are presented in the table below.

Types of PPP contracts
Types 
Duration (Years)
What the private contractors receives
Nature of private contractor performance
Examples 
Service Contract(Out sourcing)
3-Jan
Fee from government for performing a non-core services  Definitive, often technical type of service  Website design and management, ICT Capacity Building 
 
Management Contract 
8-Mar
Fee from government for the service and a performance-bases incentive  Manage the operation of a government service  Call center staffing; Management and operation of a new records management project 
 
Lease 
15-Aug
All revenues, fees or charges from consumers for the provision of the service; the service provider rents the facility from government  Manage, operate, repair, and maintain (and maybe invest in) a service to specified standards and outputs  Equipment and ICT facilities for delivering a new electronic service, Existing Govt. office space, interconnections, kiosks, etc. 
BOO & BOT 
15 - 30 
All revenues from the end-users of the e-government service; the service provider may pay a concession fee to the government and may assume existing debt  Manage, operate, as well as invest in and expand, maintain and operate an ICT facility/network or e-government services to specified standards  Telecom operations and expansion, New ICT networks for the delivery of e-government services 
Concession 
15 - 30 
All revenues from the end-users of the e-government service; the service provider may pay a concession fee to the government and may assume existing debt  Manage, operate, as well as invest in and expand, maintain and operate an ICT facility/network or e-government services to specified standards  Telecom operations and expansion, New ICT networks for the delivery of e-government services 

 Source: Adapted from IPPP (2009)

Service contract or Outsourcing: where government (public authority) hires a private company or entity to carry out one or more specified tasks or services for a period, typically 1–3 years. The public authority remains the primary provider of the infrastructure service and contracts out only portions of its operation to the private partner. The private partner must perform the service at the agreed cost and must typically meet performance standards set by the public sector.

Management contract: where the ultimate obligation for service provision remains in the public sector, daily management control and authority is assigned to the private partner or contractor. In most cases, the private partner provides working capital but no financing for investment.

Affermage or Lease contract: under this arrangement the private partner is responsible for the service in its entirety and undertakes obligations relating to quality and service standards. Responsibility for service provision is transferred from the public sector to the private sector and the financial risk for operation and maintenance is borne entirely by the private sector operator.

Concession: A concession makes the private sector operator (concessionaire) responsible for the full delivery of services in a specified area, including operation, maintenance, collection, management, and construction and rehabilitation of the system. Importantly, the operator is now responsible for all capital investment, while the public sector is responsible for establishing performance standards and ensuring that the concessionaire meets them.

Build-Operate-Transfer: this is a kind specialised concession in which a private firm or consortium finances and develops a new infrastructure project or a major component according to performance standards set by the government. The private operator now owns the assets for a period set by contract—sufficient to allow the developer time to recover investment costs through user charges and the public sector agrees to purchase a minimum level of output produced by the facility, sufficient to allow the operator to recover its costs during operation.

Joint venture: joint ventures are alternatives to full privatization in which the infrastructure is co-owned and operated by the public sector and private operators. Under a joint venture, the public and private sector partners can either form a new company or assume joint ownership of an existing company through a sale of shares to one or several private investors.

4.2. Potential Gains and Pains

Gains: Belachew and Shyamasundar (2013) in their study titled  Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in the E-Government Initiatives for Developing Nations: the case of Ethiopia highlight the following as some gains that can be obtained using ppp model to implement e-governance projects when compared with the traditional procurement arrangement. These benefits are in three dimensions, namely;

  1. Benefits to the government: this includes efficiency in management, reduced risk, better quality in technology and service, pay as service is delivered based on agreed service level agreement (SLA), etc.,
  2. To the citizens: this include among others easy access to services, better service delivery, etc.
  3. And to the private partners: these can manifest as creation of employment, creation of wealth, flexibility in service delivery, etc. PPP interventions makes also project affordable, maximizes the use of private sector skills, allocate the risk to the party best able to manage or absorb, deliver value for money, focuses on output and benefits, etc.

Similarly, Emilio (2015) identified the following as some of the potential benefits of ppp in e-government. These are:  Increased pace of rolling out e-government services, applications, and infrastructure, due to the financial participation of the private sector through both investment and profit-sharing; Use of more advanced technologies in the engineering design and availability of more custom-tailored engineering systems, made available by the private sector;  Increased focus on outcomes resulting in better quality of service delivery and increased client satisfaction; and  Downstream effects in terms of a more capable domestic private sector. Other possible benefits of ppp in e-government according to Kalianna et al. (2010) are: the possibility of cost-cutting projects, with a possible return on investment for the private sector, tapping the invaluable expertise of the private sector by government in area of customers satisfaction work productivity gains and personnel efficiency, possibility of technology transfer from private sector to the public sector and reducing need for public sector borrowing. possibility of cost-sharing projects, with a possible return on investment for the private sector.

Pains: A shift in government policy or practice is always accompanied with some level pains. These pains have always triggered resistant to change. Implementation of e-governance using ppp model has often given rise to political and social resistance in societies. Among challenges stimulating resistance as documented by IPPP (2009) includes:

  1. perception of the public that tax-payer money is transferred to profit-driven enterprises or the perceived misuse of tax payers money,
  2. the public also perceive it  that the only way the private operator can make a profit in PPP projects is by cutting corners in service quality,
  3. Past failure in technology investments is also another critical factor. The public always criticize investment in technology as waste of money, and as a result often become wary of supporting other major investments in ICT or e-government,
  4.  Lack of capacity to develop and manage ppp is another fundamental factor. The political will to support ppp may be readily available, but skills in government to further them may be lacking.

4.3. Evidence of PPP in E-governance in Africa: Gains and the Pains

PPP has been existing in other sectors of the African economy like energy, water, transportation etc. However, its appearance in the e-governance sector is relatively new just like e-governance itself. In line with new development, some African countries have key into the process to transform service delivery in their public sector. These can be seen below:

Country Projects Objectives Citations
Egypt Smart Village To remove obstacles to ICT firms investing in the Egypt’s ICT sector. IPPP (2009)
Ghana e-Ghana Broaden the tax base, increase compliance and transparency, reduce incidence of fraud, and improve the competitiveness of the business climate. Ampah and Sudan (2016)
Ghana GeGov project to deploy ICT to redesign the work of two public agencies, Owusu (2014)
South Africa South African Department of Labour e-government portal ·         The objective is enable retirees  go online and access the status of their retirement accounts, IPPP (2009)
·          Employees could access information about their benefits and pay grades,
·          The general public could access information regarding labor laws and regulations, and job seekers could access job listing databases to search for new employment.
Nigeria  e-registration To determining who are teachers Adeyemo (2011)
of teachers

Source: Authors’ Construct, 2017.

The presence of ppp in e-governance in some African countries is shown in the table above. First on the list is the partnership between Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) and a private consortium in Egypt. The partnership gave birth to a particular e-governance project called smart village. The objective of the project as can be seen above is to remove obstacles to ICT firms investing in Egypt ICT sector. Under the project MCIT provided 300 acres of land, or 20% of the project cost, and the private investors financed the remaining 80%. The second e-governance project on the list was carried out in Ghana and it is called GeGov.  The objective was to redesign the work of two public agencies namely, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Register General Department (RGD). Whereas, RGD is assigned with the responsibility to carry out initial registration and maintenance of the information of business organizations, administration of estates and marriages, GRA on the other hand, is authorized to mobilize revenue in Ghana. The public partner was Government of Ghana (GoG) represented by Ministry of Communication and a private partner called Ghana Community Network Limited. The government of Ghana made a financial contribution of US $20m and the remaining US $40 million contribution was from GCNET, the Private Partner. The eGhana PPP is considered a flagship project for the government and one of the more successful PPPs in the country. The tax registration systems are streamlined, and have allowed about 592,000 new taxpayers to file online. The combined impact of new taxpayers and new businesses seeking to normalize operations is already having a positive impact on the revenues of the Registrar General’s department and the economy as a whole.

A similar e-governance project was executed in South Africa via the ppp through a competitive tender process. A private partner known as Siemens was selected to design, build, and operate the new e-government system via a PPP methodology. The budget for the Department of Labour under the old system became the budget for the new Internet-based system. The South African Department of Labour Stakeholder Interface executed via ppp also made tremendous impact on the system. The new e-government system expanded the department’s service provision activities, thereby keeping present workers employed in more productive tasks, rather than keeping the existing level of service provision and making existing employees redundant by doing the outsourcing. It provides one point of access to numerous services that previously were only accessible via in-person visits to department offices. This system greatly facilitates consumer access to the departments many services.

Nigeria according to Adeyemo (2011) adopted a private-public partnership of a tripartite joint venture registered as National E-Government Strategies Limited (NeGST), comprising government (5%), consortium of banks (15%) and a strategic partner (80%). The joint venture has a mandate “to create a practical strategy and a single architecture to guide the evolution of digital government solutions with consistent standards, operating platforms and applications across agencies and government systems”. The launching of the e-registration of teachers in Nigeria project in May, 2006 was the first rollout of NeGST services.

In Uganda as well the adoption ppp in governance has yielded several results such as designing, financing, building and operating some e-Government projects like the issuance of the National Driving Permit, service applications forms, participating and providing technical input into the national planning processes regarding the development of the ICT sector and other specific initiatives  like e-Government, e-Commerce, partnered with government to solicit for funding from donors and development partners to fund some projects (Bitwayik, 2009).

Despite gains accruing to the adoption of ppp to fund e-governance in Africa, several challenges are also noticeable with adopting ppp to fund e-governance projects. In Ghana context for instance, the challenges include change in government, termination of contracts by government, political interference, government corruption (Haarmeyer and Mody, 1998). In 2000, the World Bank cancelled a US$100 million loan on the basis of allegations of corruption against Azurix, a subsidiary of Enron. It was alleged that Azurix paid US$5 million in bribes to government officials to win a contract to run the public utility‟s services in Accra (Stone and Webster cited in Owusu (2014)). Other factors affecting ppp in Ghana as cited in Owusu (2014) include delay and non payment to private partners. Delay from government of Ghana in approving of tax exemption on imports shows the lack of support from top government leadership.

In a related development in Tanzania, a power purchasing agreement (PPA) signed between the government and an independent power producer in 1995 has been described as ‘public-private partnership at its worst’ (Farlam, 2005). It was unclear that any kind of tender procedure was followed’ and the awarding of the contracts was less than transparent. It was later discovered that tender specifications were written after the initial offer to justify the choice of the firm selected. Similarly, Farlam (2005) also documented that in 2003, South Africa’s former transport minister, Mac Maharaj, resigned as a director of banking group FirstRand following an inquiry into allegations that he accepted gifts and payments of more than R500, 000 from former ANC fundraiser Schabir Shaik whose company was part of the winning N3 toll road consortium.

Some notable challenges were encountered with the implementation of ppp in e-governance in Uganda. Some of these challenges according to Bitwayik (2009) are: costs of submitting proposals for private partners were hiked by the government agencies, some government officials in some cases tended not to show sufficient respect for e-Government PPP contracts. This can be associated with the shift from traditional to the technology driven paradigm shift. Government at times threatens project cancellation before the partners discuss terms in the PPP contract agreement thus causing mistrust and insecurity. The process of automating Ghana’s revenue agencies and the business registration system according to Ampah and Sudan (2016) faced significant challenges along the way. For example:

  1. The consultation process to validate the PPP design took over a year.
  2. A first bid process to select private partners overlapped with the financial crisis, which resulted in potential private partners requesting a greater contribution from the public sector.
  3. Prices for the second bid were about 40 percent higher than the government had projected.
  4. A new Ghana Revenue Authority Bill was passed immediately after the award of the contract. This required consolidation of the five original revenue agencies into a single Revenue Authority and changed the scope of the awarded contract, though the payment terms remained unchanged.
  5. Ghana discovered oil, which made any perception of revenue sharing with its private partner politically sensitive, even though the repayment was limited to the total cost.
  6. Protracted World Bank procurement processes added to delays in starting the programme. This was due in large part to the World Bank’s rigorous due diligence process, given that the contract was not awarded to the lowest bidder, because the winning bidder had technical superiority.
  7. Disagreements between private partners and their sub-contractors on intellectual property rights issues delayed implementation.

5. DISCUSSION

It is evident from the foregoing that the adoption of the ppp model to fund e-governance projects is critical and necessary. Apparently, cases presented above shows that funding e-governance projects using ppp is accompanied with pains in Africa. These pains manifest in the form of reduced transparency because tender procedures were not followed in the award of contracts. In some other cases, ppp in e-governance is frustrated due to excessive bureaucracy. For instance, the case of Ghana, where consultation process to validate ppp design took over a year. Other scenarios in Africa also depict irregularities in the practice of ppp. There are occasions where costs for submitting proposals were hiked by government agencies. Apart from that, some government official in Africa display outright disrespect for ppp arrangement. This is usually triggered by a paradigm shift from the traditional procurement model to the technology driven model. Consequent upon this unruly behaviour, government always threatens cancellation of ppp projects. This breeds mistrust and insecurity.

However, government all over African continents should consider ppp as an innovative measure to create synergy with the private partners to provide quality e-governance services to her citizens. This because, ppp offers opportunities not to provide e-governance efficiently and effectively, but also reduce government expenses which can be channelled to provide other services to the citizens of the country.

6. CONCLUSIONS

Based on the success stories recorded in the cases cited, it is high time that African government consider ppp model in the implementation of e-governance projects. It should be noted that the main concern of e-government projects is to enhance effective service delivery and decrease operating costs. Provision of solid partnership with the private sector will help achieve this goal to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the services provided. On this premise, the study recommends the following:

  1. Trust Building: government and private partners should always keep the terms in the contract agreement.
  2. Avoidance of delay: unnecessary bureaucratic procedures as obtainable government agencies that may delay execution of projects must cut off.  When this is done, efficiency and effectiveness will characterise service delivery in the partnership arrangement.
  3. Corruption must be tackled. Any party caught perpetrating any element of corruption in the partnership should be sanctioned accordingly.
Funding: This study received no specific financial support.   
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. 
Contributors/Acknowledgement: Both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study.

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