Regional transport infrastructure programmes in Africa: What factors influence their performance?

Regional transport infrastructure programmes require collaborative arrangements between countries and stakeholders. We study the performance of three African programmes, looking at factors influencing their success. The extent to which collaborative arrangements and other factors contribute to project implementation and the reasons for differences in performance of these programmes are examined. The analysis demonstrates the interactions of actors with different interests, values, power and knowledge and exposes hurdles in project preparation. It reveals ineffective institutional arrangements, inadequate and unsustainable funding, leadership challenges and weak ownership that compromise project implementation. It also reveals that availability of dedicated funds, well-defined monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and strong political leadership contribute more to programme implementation than do equality in decision-making and clarity of roles and responsibilities. These factors and variations in the strength of the various collaborative arrangements across programmes suggest that a one-size-fits-all solution for accelerated implementation of programmes does not exist.