Adapted from Tom McKune’s LinkedIn commentary.
Public-private partnerships are the most effective way to deliver large infrastructure projects without corruption taking its toll.
That is a strong claim, and after almost five decades in civil engineering I make it deliberately. South Africa needs infrastructure delivered at pace — roads, water, energy, schools — and the public fiscus cannot carry that burden alone. But the argument for PPPs is not only financial. It is structural.
Accountability is built into the model
In a well-structured PPP, the private partner carries real risk: cost overruns, delays, long-term performance. Payment follows performance over the life of the asset, not just its completion. When a consortium knows it must maintain what it builds for twenty or thirty years, quality stops being a negotiable extra and becomes the business model.
Transparency is harder to bypass
PPP contracts put scope, standards, penalties and payment mechanisms on the table before work begins, with lenders and independent certifiers watching alongside the state. Multiple parties with money at stake means multiple sets of eyes on every variation and every invoice. That is not a guarantee of clean delivery — no model is — but it raises the cost of corruption considerably.
The skills dividend
There is a further benefit close to my heart. Large PPPs create exactly the kind of long-horizon, multi-disciplinary environments in which young engineers and technicians can gather the structured workplace experience they need for professional registration — if the project is set up to develop them deliberately. Infrastructure that builds people as well as assets is the best return on investment this country can make.