Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa - Politics - Nairaland
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| Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Ynix(m): 1:41am On May 24, 2021 |
Sequel to my stance on the wrongness of depending on debt financing for infrastructural project in Nigeria and Africa I came across this post on Facebook by a noteworthy US Based Lawyer of Nigerian origin titled Why Capital Projects fail in Africa. ~ BY: Princewill Odidi One major reason most capital projects fail in Africa is because our political leadership often think the Whiteman should know better. So when foreign project consultants advice them on viability of projects they accept it as true. Now this is where the problem lies. Foreign project consultants when they advice you on projects, they advice you based on the structural dynamics in their own countries. Let me give you an example. A Foreign project manager advising you on road construction under ppp, will elaborate how in a few years you can recoup the funds from toll gates. He is right if the road is built in the developed world. Most expressways in developed world have about 20 thousand cars plying the roads daily, so recouping funds through toll gates is possible. But in our clime, you have a road that may not take up to 100 cars in a day talking of toll gates. |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Ynix(m): 1:41am On May 24, 2021 |
How much toll can you collect to pay off the road. Last Friday I watched Governor Omehi of Ebonyi state on Channels TV talking about building an Olympic size airport in Abakaliki, a city less than 45 minutes from Enugu airport. Most of these governors have no idea that traditionally airports don’t generate money. Landing fees alone cannot sustain an airport. There is not a single airport in Nigeria that is self sustaining, go and check the records. They all get subventions. Airports need continuous maintanance, a governor struggling to pay salaries how will you also create a budget to sustain an airport that cannot attract more that two flights a day? I just came to a conclusion that as African our biggest problem is how we process information. One of the busiest airports in the world generates 70% of its income from car parking fees. Airports does not mean development has come to you, an airport is actually a burden, if left to decay it becomes societal hazard. About 10 years ago, Bayelsa state spent about 12 billion naira to build a specialist hospital, where is it today? It is sinking in sand. Akwa Ibom built theirs, beautiful edifice, operating at the level of a clinic today, Oshiomole spent billions building a mega specialist hospital, it is still non functional. The big question, why are all these mega projects failing? The answer is simple. Our governors will never learn. Colonial mentality has blinded their common sense when it comes to project development. A specialist hospital is not how magnificent the building is, so you can spend all the billions in construction it is a waste of time, a specialist hospital is not how sophisticated the equipments you order from overseas are, the equipments are useless if your technicians can not operate it and your medical team cannot translate the results and apply them to operational use, rather a specialist hospital is the quality of doctors you have, the quality of their training, their ability to apply their training to modern research and practice, and the synergy between medical diagnoses and pharmaceutical research advancements. It is this common sense that is lacking among our political elites when they embark on huge projects. I would not really blame the masses because they really do not understand how these things work, but our Governors should at least consult before they keep wasting public resources on useless elephant projects that make no sense. A mud house in a local village that has these combination is a far better specialist hospital than the billions spent by governments to build gigantic structures. A Governor who is sincere would rather fund a university teaching hospital that has a degree of medical capacity and professors with ability to convert the teaching hospital to a specialist hospital, rather we abandon our teaching hospitals to build white castles that upon commissioning end up a wasted investment while teaching hospital rot away. Why do we as a people find it so difficult to see the end from the beginning? 1 Like |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Ynix(m): 1:42am On May 24, 2021 |
There is a big problem about how we reason in Africa, and unless that reasoning changes we are in big trouble. Universities are meant to be centers for research and development, it is academics that think for government, but when you fail to fund the universities they die a natural death and government initiatives fail. You can imagine how much we have spent in electricity in the past 20 years. The entire Nigeria as a Country is not up to Texas as a State. What will it cost to just come up with a new modern design, and rewire the entire country if what we have is not working? Or what will it take for every state to have their own independent power, and transmission stations? No matter how much money you spend to fix an old car it will remain an old car. Most of the colonial infrastructure we inherited need upgrade and change, and most of our political leaders need an upgrade in the way they think. |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by optionalY09: 1:42am On May 24, 2021 |
Lack of proper planning and corruption nothing more |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Ynix(m): 1:42am On May 24, 2021 |
You can imagine Ghanaians of yesterday who lived at our mercy now chasing Nigerians away from their country, Rwanda, Botswana and Ethiopia all doing so well, yet the giant of Africa crawls and barks without biting. There are a few sectors that must work properly if Nigeria must get it right. Our educational system needs total revamping, our bureaucracy need total reform, the engine room of any government is the bureaucracy, but if the bureaucracy is corrupted the entire government delivery machinery fails. Our security apparatuses need to be decentralized, and health care given attention. Infrastructure is important, but we have to apply common sense into infrastructural development. I read of a governor who built fly overs and everyone is thrilled and call it development. In the developed world, flyovers are built only because the local roads are congested with traffic, so flyovers are built to create decongestion. At the end of the day the flyovers are plyed by sheep and cattle at the expense of the development of the human capacity index of your people. If we must invest in infrastructure, invest in meaningful infrastructure that connects with the people’s environment. Invest in boreholes or water treatment plants, invest in rural roads linking local markets, invest in fresh produce preservation systems amongst others. In our clime we build flyovers not to decongest traffic but to showcase it as development, unknown that those same foreigners you bring to build these flyovers laugh at our collective ignorance as a people. The uncontrollable appetite for wealth among our people can all be traced to the failure of the bureaucracy. Until we return to the days when civil servants can afford to buy cars and build houses from their salaries Nigeria can never be fixed. Politics need to be made less attractive and the civil service more attractive. The scares dollars we spend to hire foreigners to come and design and build projects for us in Africa, use that same money to upgrade our engineering and science departments in universities, use it to sponsor our academics to travel and collaborate in research overseas and later domesticate knowledge instead of renting knowledge. Create pathways for success for our young people instead of calling them lazy youths. How long do we keep our young people at home jobless before we acknowledge that they are wasting their youthfulness? Development is no magic, it is common sense, it’s time we request common sense reasoning from our politicians. Africa must rise again. 1 Like |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by XXXXTENTACION: 3:06am On May 24, 2021 |
Very good summations.
but then our stupid leaders only care about their pockets  |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by teamoneline: 3:07am On May 24, 2021 |
Quality education is the solution to the problem of capital projects failing and to a better Nigeria in general. Quality simply means good teachers/lecturers from primary to tertiary who are properly paid and also constantly improving. proper funding in areas like R&D. Very important. That alone leads to innovation and improvement. And we all know modern economies are innovation based not oil based. When you don't have the education that can build capital projects you'll definitely not have the education to produce people that can manage capital projects because of no R&D to keep capital projects alive. The long and short is that when you have a failed education system everything must fail. There's no two ways about that. But we must first make education compulsory from primary to atleast secondary and control population else we are going nowhere. 1 Like |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Rossiminku: 3:32am On May 24, 2021 |
XXXXTENTACION: Oh shut up. You are 10 times more stupid than any African leader. You and the nasty person who posted this utter GARBAGE are repulsive. We don't need your stereotyping and lies aimed at discrediting Africans based on your ZERO research. Uneducated dolts sitting in your dirty bedroom criticising an entire continent of 1.2 billion people in 54 countries. How did you magically know that ''capital projects in Africa'' don't work? How many countries in Africa have you visited, including the dunce whose article was reposted here? I bet it is less than 3. Calling ''Africa'' as if it is your backyard or bedroom. How many projects out of the many thousands of projects in Africa have you researched? 2? 3? 0? Emergency online experts. Don't go and do something useful with your lives. Mr 'Africa'. You don't even know what is happening in your own village or your state. But you know what is happening in ''Africa''. Rubbish. |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by XXXXTENTACION: 4:18am On May 24, 2021 |
[s][quote author=Rossiminku post=102002547] [b]Oh shut up. You are 10 times more stupid than any African leader. You and the nasty person who posted this utter GARBAGE are repulsive. We don't need your stereotyping and lies aimed at discrediting Africans based on your ZERO research. Uneducated dolts sitting in your dirty bedroom criticising an entire continent of 1.2 billion people in 54 countries. How did you magically know that ''capital projects in Africa'' don't work? How many countries in Africa have you visited, including the dunce whose article was reposted here? I bet it is less than 3. Calling ''Africa'' as if it is your backyard or bedroom. How many projects out of the many thousands of projects in [/s] Africa is the most backward continent on the face of earth. In terms of developement both scientific and technologically can you name one continent that can be compared to Africa. Africa is a shithole and backward continent you either take it or leave it |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Rossiminku: 5:16am On May 24, 2021 |
XXXXTENTACION: What a non-achieving non-entity and school dropout like you thinks about Africa is completely irrelevant. What you should be concerned about is bettering yourself, because right now, you are clearly worthless. |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by millhouse: 5:43am On May 24, 2021 |
Educative |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Rossiminku: 5:51am On May 24, 2021 |
millhouse: If you allow yourself to be ''educated'' by school dropouts that have never stepped foot in any African country, never mind all 54 African countries, more fool you. |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by nthony10: 6:46am On May 24, 2021 |
Great points stated by the op, especially the revamping of the bureaucracy and educational/health systems. But you see our problem in Nigeria is beyond all these. Nigeria of the 50s was a very prosperous Nation who operated by regions, the beauty of this is these regions were in healthy competition with one another and were constantly trying to outperform each other. But what do we have today as the constitution, all power to take and distribute resources is on the table of the president, this has weakened the states that no matter how some of them try they can't generate enough for themselves. Another part talks about the exclusive list, yes it's important to have an exclusive list but why should power generation be on that list, why should policing (police) be there and other things that can make a state self sufficient are found there. How can a country grow like this? This type of constitution gives rise to each ethnic group in the country wanting to be in power not necessarily to build the nation but to get in power just to favour his people. A constitution the makes people productive and they know that their rights will be protected is what can change the mindset of Africans So you are very correct but this problem in Africa (case study Nigeria) is more foundational. If the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Ps 11:3) |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Ynix(m): 7:19am On May 24, 2021 |
nthony10:You are very right in that conclusion |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Ynix(m): 7:21am On May 24, 2021 |
Rossiminku:it is obvious you are not investigative and analytical. Read the posts carefully and conclude not being rash in your conclusion |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by XXXXTENTACION: 7:45am On May 24, 2021 |
Rossiminku:Ever heard of the adhominem bias its when you attack a persons character rather than his argument. Africa is a backward continent and you can never argue that point. is it Europe  Is it Asia is it Australia Of all the continents in the world Africa is the most underdeveloped. all the poorests countries in the world are all in Africa. Africa is a shithole take it or leave it.  1 Like |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Amos1423(m): 7:56am On May 24, 2021 |
Since this is a quite interesting thread focused at development let me also make my own submission here which I have been asking for an audience with my local government chairman to explain this module to him after sending him diverse PDF about my thoughts. It would take a serious leader not less than 8 years to rebuild the whole of Nigeria if leadership is taken as per what it should be, how do I mean? Firstly, a very common problem with Nigeria is: (1) Housing System (2) Unequal wealth distribution (3) Educational funding (4) Industrial capacities. • Housing System: You would agree with me that Nigeria as a country lacks a poor housing system and infact we don't even build our houses as per how our different cities is planned (that's if we even have a modern plan for it) .What the government should do is to take up the resposresponsibi of providing modern houses in line with global housing system (a housing system is dufferdif from that which is practiced in Nigeria o, not an estate you build and put a fence, fencing doesn't beautify a state but rather advertises a gap between different tiers of the society; poor and rich.) which would automatically give us a new look and then embrace a tenency system where individuals pay some form of taxes as rent for the houses and there sign a private housing act making building of houses by individuals very strict that way government can gain control of our entire town planning/how our settlement would be arranged which is the responsibilities of the ministry of lands and housing. If we can arrange our settlement probably without unnecessary segregation you'd discover that we will create pathway for a good road network to be established which that should be the responsibilities of the local gigovernme which is already stipulated in the constitution, the local government should provide funding for development through the local government development council for building of roads and health centers..... I will come and modify this post make I dey go work! |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by CodeTemplar: 9:53am On May 24, 2021 |
Rossiminku:It is because of folks like you I have that signature that says "Africa is proof ... " |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by CodeTemplar: 10:05am On May 24, 2021 |
OP made a lot of sense. Education is now about failure rate and not knowledge transfer or application. Development is now about senseless accumulation of physical structures. Marriage is now about financial security. Power is bow for oppression. The rate we derail from logical purpose of things over here is alarming. The how no longer matters but the fruits(physically). Look at the specialist hospitals part alone. Instead of specializing in something crucial they endup building general purpose hospitals with weak combination of equipments. 1 Like |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by Ynix(m): 11:20am On May 24, 2021 |
CodeTemplar:Quite unfortunate |
| Re: Why Capital Projects Fail In Africa by millhouse: 11:51am On May 25, 2021 |
Rossiminku:and you think only those that went to school are in quote “ wise or knowledgeable “...? You think the 4 walls of an institution is the pinnacle of being a wise man ? Must must be living a shithole somewhere 1 Like |
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