Planning for a modern Juba: the pitfalls in choosing partners
By Constantine Bartel
April 8 2007 — One year ago, a number of Southern Sudanese professionals and I agreed with the basic objectives of the government of the Southern Sudan on the need to harness existing human and physical resources and build the institutional capacity to undertake some of the pertinent and urgent reconstruction and development priorities. The need for this was reiterated by Vice president Salva Kirr’s remarks in Juba, on March 21st 2007 when he addressed the Sudan Consortium Meeting and I quote
….regimes emerging out of conflict situations like ours with weak structures, institutions and capacity and poor systems are often prone to corrupt practices both from within and from without”
This is pleasant to hear but it also makes what I am going to say less relevant for the Vice President because it would be like preaching to the converted. All that is expected of him is put in place the right structures and processes and to deal with offenders. From recent reports I believe he is dealing with offenders but not necessarily the process. What I am going to say might be relevant to others in government that are interested in the many ideas and alternatives out there to identify the best policy mix. I must admit, that this plea will not stop those that are not interested in policy development.
This article was triggered by a news item about the governments move to embark on a mega plan for a new Juba capital city. The report raised some excitement but also a number of concerns. My comments will be centred on a few concerns. I will also provide some alternative thoughts.
According to the news report, the proposal and plan is made in conjunction with the chief executive officer of a Ugandan company, “Made in Africa Investment Bank”. The report suggests or at least the senior government official talked of a number of fantasy developments as if the Ugandan expert Mr Geoffrey Onegi Obel who is one of the foremost Corporate Lawyers in Uganda and Mr. Philip Curtain had won the bid. I am concerned that the town plan is not led and peer reviewed by an interdisciplinary group of experts made up of Town Planners, Architects, Environmental Impact Assessment teams on the government side that are capable of assessing any plans put forward by Mr. Onegi Obel and his partners and any other consortium that may provide alternative plans free of charge. Your first reaction could be “we do not have such a team, we lack the capacity” I disagree and I will answer this later in the article.
I do not want to question the designer’s interpretation of the new city but I am aware of how London, Paris and Brasilia came about. According to the design consultant, Philip Curtain and Mr. Geoffrey Onegi Obel’s, presentation, the outlook of the “modern Juba city” would be based on other cities such as London, Paris and Brasilia. Comparing Gondokoro Island to the current city of London maybe far fetched. If you are aware of the 17 years history of the docklands regeneration project, the most notable achievement from a public policy point of view is the fact that the UK government spent £1.86 billion (3.6 billion USD) in public sector investment and the private sector investment amounted to £7.7 billion (15 billion USD). This may look reasonable but even so the government came under scrutiny for running over budget.
The report pointed out that up-to-date, the project has no financial backers to implement it. This fact should inform the government of whether it is worth spending millions on a plan that has no private sector backing especially if the plan can be obtained more cheaply.
Perhaps the Governments priority is to focus on attracting private sector investment by focusing on a number of domestic policies that would enhance the competitiveness of Southern Sudan in order to attract such private sector capital. I would argue that we have abundant capacity. We have more people with university degrees than South Korea had when it embarked on its economic modernisation and development. Unlike South Korea, we have the resources. We just have not made it a priority to harness and channel this knowledge towards achieving some urgent development goals.
I could demonstrate this given the opportunity. In fact I would go further to say we could create more than 200,000 jobs a year. I will discuss this with those who think that such targets including for job creation are important.
Reverting back but not dwelling on the plan, it is important that we should learn from old and new cities like London, Beirut, Abuja and Brasilia, but copying such cities would amount to intellectual laziness. Juba with its rivers soil texture offers unique features that would distinguish it from these European cities and Brasilia that was built in a middle of the Brazilian rain forest. I agree with Mr. Machar that the range of technologies currently at our disposal should be harnessed to address transportation and housing plans. But this is not much of a concern of this article, nor is it the purpose to question the expertise of the designer. It is more about how this two able gentleman are associated with this mega plan.
Raising eyebrows
The questions are: Who else are providing their visions on a master plan for Juba? Who is undertaking these studies? Why not invite an open competition? Who estimated the $5.2 million price tag for four studies? To avoid all these questions and concerns, GoSS needs to adopt a transparent biding process in which all interested companies will have compete and the best design or plan that fits GoSS bill wins the contract. This sounds trivial but to the best of my knowledge, the GoSS Ministry of Housing, Land and Public Utilities has yet employed qualified staff to handle such multi-million projects. Therefore, again the question rises which should come first the capacity to understand a plan or a plan that cannot be scrutinized due to lack of input from GoSS?
Bidding at no cost
Folks, we don’t need to spend such a huge some of money for a City plan, for example especially in the preliminary process of the bid. Foster and Partners won an international design competition for the re-design of the Reichstag (German Parliament), back in 1993. Yes they cashed in money, but after they won the bid. Philipp Holzmann, a transnational company involved in building sports facilities did support China’s bid for the 2008 Olympiad. Along with its Beijing-based regular partner CSCEC Construction Co.ltd, Holzmann made donations to the Beijing bid committee to show their support. I am not advocating that companies should pay to have their bids considered, but it proves that it is possible to request bids for studies at no cost or at a small fee. I would suggest that the government of South Sudan could use the 5 million US dollars to finance a multidisciplinary team of experts to manage this task instead, and here again I quote Vice Presidents Kirr’s address;
“We are indeed responsible for some of the problems, given our lack of capacity”.
I think it has more to do with the lack of the spirit to make smart and prudent choices. Take a look at this website hosting all the bids for the Beijing Olympics . The Chinese government and many public agencies did not pay for bids but may provide a fee at a later stage in the bidding process.
I would advocate that to secure an efficient and transparent environment, a special supervision committee must be established to undertake background checks on perspective bidders and business partners.
Managing risks and partnerships
In addition, how will GoSS manage the risk associated with this and other project? What estimates do GoSS use in this particular contract to determine its worth? If there is a fee how was it calculated? While I would very much appreciate an answer or information on these questions, this prompts me to discuss some alternatives such as public private partnerships contracts. “Public-private partnerships” (PPP) are contractual agreements formed between a public agency and private sector entity that allow for greater private sector participation in the delivery of projects. Private sector participation has traditionally been limited to separate planning, design or construction contracts on a fee for service basis – based on the public agency’s specifications. Expanding the private sector role allows the public agencies to tap private sector technical, management and financial resources in new ways to achieve certain public agency objectives such as greater cost and schedule certainty, supplementing in-house staff, innovative technology applications, specialized expertise or access to private capital. The private partner can expand its business opportunities in return for assuming the new or expanded responsibilities and risks.
One of the reasons why public agencies enter into public-private partnerships is to provide specialized management capacity for large and complex programs and help in the substitution of private resources and personnel for constrained public resources.
Project risks are allocated to the party that is the best equipped to manage them. This raises the question whether the “Made in Africa Investment Bank” is the best placed to manage such long-term risks. In addition there are institutions like The Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) that are specialised in covering or managing risks. FMO offers a range of financial instruments to private companies and financial institutions in developing economies. Participation by such funds provides some guarantee about the soundness of the project.
I have in the past three years tried to share my thoughts with my colleagues in the GoSS. I admire the ideas put forward by Mr. Geoffrey Onega, but I also think that a process needs to be put in place so that such fine ideas will not be thrown away because of unfortunate irregularities in the process of selecting and implementing them.
The nightmare scenario
The thought of the heart of the GoSS based in Gondokoro without competent civil service professionals, an industrial zone without industries, railway line that connects to Gulu, Malakala and Lokichoggio with no goods being transported perhaps just raw materials, city tramways and a hovercraft ferry with no maintenance rotting way, power that is not affordable and all this because capital goods were bought with petrol dollars but no attention given to technology transfer or diffusion is a nightmare. If we can plan for a new Juba we can also plan to avoid this realistic nightmare scenario.
What strategy for South Sudan
The Indian nation today pay homage to its first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for his immense contributions in the making of a strong, secular and modern India. Nehru laid down the foundations of the modern Indian technology base by following a certain economic philosophy. He believed that if independence was the central political issue, then fighting poverty was the central economic issue. With independence achieved in August 1947, poverty was the problem. I do not think that the Sudanese political impasse has come to an end. But wake me up if you think I am dreaming. Nehru and Gandhi were united on political objectives, but divided on economics. For Gandhi, the model was self-reliance—simple home production of basic goods, self-sufficiency in the village, and a spinning wheel in every hut. Nehru’s view was a different kind of self-sufficiency – industrialization and the steel mill. His central objective was “to get rid of the appalling poverty of the people.” He believed in technology and progress, in machines and industrialization. 50 years later 300 million strong Indian middle class can dream of rebuilding Calcutta and other major cities. India is an emerging economic player.
Forgive me for bothering you with this Indian story, I just wanted to point out that I am missing the economic rational for the development of the southern Sudan. The question is whether and when the government is going to articulate its economic development strategy and rational and how it is going to make sure that civil servants implement the strategy.
The African experience
My conviction is that many good case studies and experiences, knowledge and pitfalls of development can be found in Africa. I recognise that having competitive bidding for service provision in Southern Sudan may shut out competent African professionals and companies who may have the experience and knowledge but not the money in favour of established multinationals that may have the money but not the required experience and the required sensitivities. I would suggest that a targeted policy and incentives to encourage regional participation could be put in place in order to promote regional cooperation, integration and trade.
I understand that a number of prominent individuals are being investigated for one reason or the other. No action will eradicate corruption. It is a phenomenon found in all countries with different stages of development. The only way to make sure that such practices do not hinder development is to have transparent systems of public private partnership contracts in a system where no one person or company decides the future of the three year old boy and girl.
On another note, while the army should have barracks to house their equipment and have ammunition stored further away from residential areas, the fighting men and women are part of the society and should be living in neighbourhoods with everyone else.
* The author is Assistant Programmes Director at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) in Geneva and co-founder and Director of the African Technology Development Forum (http://www.atdforum.org). He can be reached at [email protected].