Volume 8, Issue 2
April-June 2019
CONTENTS
Chair's Foreword
The Problem of Africa's
Infrastructure Project Failures
Earth Science Events
References and selected reading
Chair’s Foreword*
Welcome to the 31st newsletter of
Society of African Earth Scientists where we visit the topic of
the continent's frequent infrastructure project failures and the
causes for them.
The
Problem of Africa's Infrastructure Project Failures
A
brief investigation into the literature of this subject reveals that
making an inventory for Africa is perhaps over ambitious, as it would promise
to be vast in extent.
The work of
Nweze [1] on the failure of public infrastructure projects in Nigeria alone
reveals , via the work of Oseminan [2], Nigeria to be "the world's junkyard of failed projects" and
that there are 400 major failed projects in Nigeria alone as at 2016 costing
hundreds of billions of Naira [3]. This number will have escalated. Reasons
identified for failure by the study include: corruption, absence of project
management expertise, inexperienced staff, absence of relevant skills. Other
reasons identified included, incorrect project cost estimates, poor planning.
Taking into
account all projects large and small, Okereke [4] records that 11,886 Federal Government projects were abandoned in Nigeria between 1971 and 2011. This
does not include state government projects which would surely make the list of
failures vast. Even if other African countries have only a fraction of
Nigeria's failures we see that an inventory for Africa is an unrealistic task.
Instead one can focus on learning lessons from significant projects which is
what Okereke attempts in his paper.
There are
positive examples on the continent of projects that succeed on budget and on
time, in South Africa and Ghana. Take for instance the South African
infrastructure put in place for the highly successful 2010 FIFA World
Cup.
 |
| Dadin Kowa Dam, Gombe State, Nigeria. Completed in 1984 as a hydro-electric dam project, the dam has not delivered a single watt of electric power to the residents of Gombe State to this day |
Ika and St Macary [5] cite project management as the key factor in
the failure of African infrastructure projects. Sometimes, these seem to
suggest the sheer complexity of project conditions requires a level of project
management that is missing.
Isaac
Damoah, in his PhD thesis on this subject uses Ghana as a case study on why
projects fail in developing nations [6], and his study is notable for
identifying changes in government and lack of continuity as causes for project
failure. These have very recently been highlighted in the press in the case of
Nigeria being told by a British Court that it must pay $9 billion to a British company for failing to provide the gas for a planned gas processing plant construction in Calabar, South Eastern Nigeria [7]. This represents a catastrophic waste of benefit that might
have been enjoyed by Nigerians in the form of electricity that might have been generated from the gas. In this instance there was a lack of continuity
between three successive Nigerian administrations that led to the British
company claim. Other factors Damoah cites in failure are political interference,
poor planning, procurement processes, release of funds, and so on.
Solutions
to combat project failure offered in the literature include obvious advice such
as: encouraging governments to prioritise monitoring of their
projects [8], or tackle corruption [9]. There is advice to take note of unrealistic
pricing at the contract bid stage, and to demand cashflow information from
contractors to ensure they can operate for the duration of the project [10].
Apart
from recommending that various professional bodies and government institutions should meet their
obligations by better enforcing codes of ethics or practice on their members or clients, Nweze
also makes the prudent case for the review of procurement legislation with a
view to plugging loopholes for abuse [11].
Earth Science Events
October 6-9, 2019
16th SAGA Biennial
Conference and Exhibition "Current Informing the Future"
VISION:The conference, a
staple of the geophysical community in Africa, provides a forum for engagement,
idea generation and sharing.
VENUE: Durban, South
Africa
October 6-10, 2019
17th African Regional
Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering "Innovation and
Sustainability in Geotechnics for Developing Arica"
VISION: Innovative and
sustainable infrastructure is crucial for Africa's economic integration. As
such, the vision of improved geotechnics is a positive notion directed at the
development of the continent.
VENUE: Cape Town, South
Africa
October 30-31, 2019
World Congress on Irrigation, Water Resources & Drainage Engineering
VISION:
VENUE: Sydney, Australia
November 18-19, 2019
Crop Science & Agriculture
VISION:
VENUE: Bali, Indonesia
November 26-27, 2019
Global Summit on Earth Science & Climate Change
VISION:
VENUE: Lisbon, Portugal
References
- Nweze, N., Failure of Public Infrastructure Projects in Nigeria: Causes, Effects and Solutions,Texila International Journal of Management,vol.2, issue 2, Dec. 2006.
- Osemenan, I., (1987). Project Abandonment. Newswatch Magazine, (1), 15.
- Kotangora, O.O.,(1993). Project Abandonment in Nigeria. Nigeria Tribune.
- Okereke, O.C., Causes of failure and abandonment of project deliverables in Africa, PM World Journal, Vol. VI, issue 1 - Jan 2017.
- Ika, L and J. Saint-Macaray, Why Do Projects Fail in Africa?, Journal of African Business, September,2014,(15(3),151-155,2014). Link: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/280213472.
- Damoah, I.S., An investigation into the causes and effects of project failure in developing countries: Ghana as a case study, PhD Thesis, Liverpool John Moore University, October 2005.
- Reuters, Judge to allow firm to try to seize $9 billion Nigerian assets in gas dispute, Aug 2019. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nigeria-arbitration/uk-judge-to-allow-firm-to-try-to-seize-9-billion-in-nigerian-assets-in-gas-dispute-idUKKCN1V6154.
- Damoah, op. cit.
- Nweze, op. cit.
- Murwira, D., and M. Bekker, Building an infrastructure project performancein the north-west province department of public works and roads, Acta Structilia 2017: 24(2).
- Nweze, op. cit.
