Dilapidated Infrastructure: Africa’s Undoing

Published on 14th November 2006

Investment in infrastructure can redress high unemployment and poverty levels and correct skill deficits. From a theoretical perspective supported by experience elsewhere in Africa, properly formulated employment creation programs based on the use of labour-intensive methods could be established to construct and maintain the required physical infrastructure, thus creating employment, skills and institutional capacities.

In South Africa, the levels of unemployment are estimated at 28 percent, with 24 percent of the population living below the poverty line. There is need for housing and municipal infrastructure (water supply, sewerage, streets, storm-water drainage, electricity, refuse collection) and physical infrastructure in both urban and rural areas. According to the World Bank (1994: 2) infrastructure can deliver major benefits in economic growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability - but only when it effectively provides services that respond to demand. The problem of infrastructure backlog is aggravated by the apparent lack of capacity and skills at institutional, community and individual levels.

Public Works in South Africa: Challenges and Potential 

In August 1991 COSATU convened a seminar on “One Million Jobs by 1992" to review experiences and opinions about public works programs and develop a strategy for the future. The seminar provided a good background to the subject. Based on Abedian and Standish’s report for the Human Sciences Research Council, the Trade Union Research Project reported that public works programs fail because they are: 

  • seldom scaled to the magnitude of national manpower needs;
  • often introduced in a fragmented and unsystematic way;
  • implemented using inappropriate technology;
  • introduced on an ad hoc basis, without link to an overall development policy;
  • short of administrative back-up;
  • short of  adequate post project maintenance; and
  • almost entirely dependent upon the government’s commitment 

In their review of international public works programs, the Trade Union Research Project highlighted certain problems, which included: conflict between sufficient planning and the need to start a program quickly and use donor investment funds speedily; difficulty in taking responsibility for execution of projects: inadequate human and financial resources; and lack of  active participation by local beneficiaries. 

The report indicated that in sub-Saharan Africa, programs using employment-intensive methods for the provision of physical infrastructure have achieved important complementary development objectives such as: a significant increase in employment generation per unit of expenditure; construction and maintenance of technically sound and economically efficient assets; development of individual skills: technical, supervisory, managerial, administrative and entrepreneurial; and the building of institutional capacity at local, regional and national levels. 

Over the past 20 years, billions of Rands have been spent on projects and programs aimed at creating employment and providing physical infrastructure, but the situation has not improved. Based on both international and local experiences, the problems of South Africa’s large-scale public works programs prior to 1990 can be attributed to the following factors, which must be avoided in order for projects to be successful: Lack of clear objectives linking the short and long-term visions of the program;

  • Lack of pilot projects with extensive training programs or lead-in time to allow    proper planning at a national scale.
  • The programs have seldom been scaled to the magnitude of national manpower needs. Very often they have been introduced in an unsystematic and fragmentary style;
  • Organizational infirmities and inappropriate administrative   arrangements;
  • Imbalance between centralization for higher level co-ordination and decentralization for local decision-making and execution of works;
  • Inadequate post-project maintenance arrangements largely attributed to the failure to ensure an authority with sufficient stake in the projects, lack of community participation and ineffective local government;
  • Over ambition hence lack of appreciation of the time it takes to build the necessary individual and institutional capacities at various levels;
  • Lack of clearly defined and executed training programs that link medium to a long-term development plan;
  •  No long term development planning;
  • Politicization of the projects;
  • The assets constructed were not cost-effective, of doubtful value and ill- maintained;
  • Individual skills were not improved. Training, where present, was not particularly appropriate or focused and has not shown itself to be carried through into post-project employment.

Recommendations  

In the early phases the emphasis was on the creation of employment opportunities for unskilled labour. Over the past decade, it has become clear that in order to use labour productively, it is necessary to train a skilled supervisor who is technically and organizationally competent and thus able to direct and motivate the workers under his control. (In Kenya, the ratio of laborers to site-supervisors is about 70 to 1; in Botswana it is about 20 to 1.) Equally, for a successful national program, it is necessary to educate engineers about employment creation and train them in the specific skills required in planning, control and evaluation of large labour-intensive programs (to date the ratio is about one engineer per 300 laborers).  

The following must be considered when embarking on employment creation public works program in South Africa: good preliminary analytical work and thorough attention to technical aspects throughout the work; pilot projects which test all aspects (technical, administrative, organizational, institutional, wage rates and conditions of employment, training, planning, socio-economic/community) and act as the embryonic training program for future work; strong institutions with good management systems: yet flexible; extensive training; long-term political support; long-term co-ordination and objective external advice; and  consensus reached with regard to: wage rates, conditions of employment, role and responsibility of the community.

Conclusion 

South Africa’s National Public Works infrastructure programs have the potential to redress high unemployment levels and correct the skill deficits in disadvantaged communities. This can be achieved through an efficient institutional set up, effective community participation, and construction technology that is pragmatic and innovative in nature.  The public works program in South Africa should change as the policy environment changes, from relief, emergency and “special” public works program to a long-term structured employment-generation program. The approach should link economic growth, employment and investment policies. The Public Works Program must aim to ensure that infrastructure is planned around local needs rather than vice-versa. Through the establishment of local associations, poor people are able to plan improvements in their community, negotiate with local authorities for a greater share of investment resources and learn to organize construction and other projects. The associations which are developed will also provide a good basis for other initiatives, such as mutual health funds for the informal sector.

By Wellington Didibhuku Thwala
University of Johannesburg
Department of Construction Management and Quantity Surveying


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