1. PPPs in HE & Southern African
Regional Development
• What conditions are necessary to ensure that
partnerships between public higher education and
the private sector provide opportunities for mutual
benefit?
• Context counts when answering this question: in the
SADC region, turn‐key PPPs in HE are needed to
foster sectoral development to the benefit of
broader social and economic advancement
Piyushi Kotecha
Chief Executive Officer,
SARUA

2. Specifying the rationale for
PPPs in Southern African HE
• While the general rationale for PPPs fits
– Leverage private investment
– Tap partners’ strengths to optimise roles/responsibilities/risks
– Match service delivery to market needs
– Stimulate innovation/entrepreneurship/growth
• It must be tailored for PPPs in HE in Southern Africa
– Often constrained public and private capacity capacity development must
be part of PPPs
– Development imperatives arise from a globalising world and from African
social conditions PPPs must respond to both
– A backdrop of chronic under‐development, under‐investment, poor planning,
poor social conditions, weak resource base affecting the region and HE
countries must both redress the consequences and ‘accelerate the catch‐up’
– Massive public and private investment needed to revitalise HE as a driver of
regional development governments and markets must work together
Piyushi Kotecha

3. The nature of mutual benefit in
PPP’s in Southern Africa
• Partnerships between governments, HE and industry
can jointly mobilise the resources required for
interlinked and knowledge‐based social
development and economic growth
• PPPs in HE should reinforce and not dilute the
relevance and responsiveness of universities to their
societies, polities and economies
• PPPs should keep primarily in view the public good
rather than private interests: HE promotes a critical
citizenry, growth and development, the
consolidation of social justice
Piyushi Kotecha

4. Framing an approach for PPPs
in Southern African HE
1. Regional role players must give focused attention to PPPs’ potential for
fast‐tracking key developmental interventions in both national and multi‐
country contexts
2. Engagement between government, HE and industry must be
comprehensive, multi‐layer, sustained, iterative – and there must be
feedback loops between local, national and regional (AU, NEPAD, SADC)
layers
3. Guiding frameworks for PPPs must be generated from available sources
(e.g. case studies, comparative multi‐country research, national policies,
incentive schemes and guidelines) for systemic SADC responses
4. Important lessons and good practice must be captured and disseminated
via capacity development networks (e.g. SARUA, AAU), to inform
overarching policy frameworks and replication across the region
Piyushi Kotecha

5. Framing an Approach, cont.
5. Priority areas for viable PPPs in HE in the region must be
identified
• Nature – e.g. policy, infrastructural and capacity development initiatives
• Focus – e.g. HE quality, ICTs, S&T and innovation, HIV/AIDS, good governance
• Modes – e.g. infrastructure provision; contracting for delivery; private
management of public facilities; partnerships/affiliations for teaching,
curriculum development, research and innovation, QA
• Criteria – e.g. “mutual benefit” as defined, regional priorities, stakeholder
engagement and agreement (and case‐specific)
• NB: targeted, large‐scale PPP interventions recommended to both capacitate
HE’s contribution to social development and integrate HE with the global
knowledge economy – e.g. substantial infrastructure provision and extensive
knowledge networks
Piyushi Kotecha

6. Checking the proposed
rationale/approach for PPPs in
Southern African HE
• Existing examples of PPPs in Southern African HE
provide some lessons, validations and warnings
– Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST)
– Knowledge networks in South Africa
– Inter‐institutional PPPs in South African distance education
– ICT infrastructure provisions and partnerships in Africa
Piyushi Kotecha

7. Case study 1: Botswana
International University of
Science & Technology
• Second national university on fast‐track development since 2005: first
enrolments 2010, 10 000 students envisaged by 2016 – S&T institutional
mission supports regional and national priorities for socio‐economic
development
• PPP opportunities (DFBO) explicitly sought by government ‐ in line with
national privatisation policies (and public procurement regulations
followed)
• PPP sought to access innovation and project management strength, and
to share market risk – government remains committed to financing capital
shortages
• Transaction advisory services used – effective planning and procurement,
knowledge transfer and capacity development for implementation team
built into project
Piyushi Kotecha

8. Knowledge networks in South Africa
• Innovation PPPs fostered by government incentives (THRIP,
Innovation Fund) – moving beyond ad hoc consultancy and
contracting for financial benefit, to systemic gains
• Knowledge networks successfully emerging in e.g.
biotechnology, ICT and new materials development – as
linked to national priorities for competitive economic growth
• Knowledge networks contributing to centres of research
excellence – basic research capability strengthened, not
weakened
• Potential modality for comparable activities in other SADC
countries, or for multi‐country knowledge networks, is being
modelled
Piyushi Kotecha

9. Inter-institutional PPPs in South
African distance education
• Collaborative arrangements sprang up between public and private
providers in the distance education arena, 1994‐2002 (especially
service and tuition partnerships) – pre‐empted national QA
dispensation and national HE restructuring plan
• South Africa followed international trends around private HE growth
and inter‐institutional PPPs – but unintended consequences followed
in the absence of a proper policy interface (e.g. perpetuation of
institutional historical advantage via market initiative, geographically
skewed access to HE, uneven HE quality)
• SA government set curbs on these PPPs in 2002 via re‐accreditation
requirements and funding determinations – linkage to national
imperatives is a key condition for successful inter‐institutional and
other PPPs
Piyushi Kotecha

10. ICT infrastructure provision and
partnerships in Africa
• African universities have prioritised the integration of ICTs into teaching, research
and management and the AAU is tasked with co‐ordinating the many initiatives
under way – this is a critical, but not an easy task
• There is intense partnership activity in ICTs in African HE, involving different kinds
of partners and arrangements
– Pan‐African E‐network for telemedicine and tele‐education in 53 African countries: joint initiative of
Indian Government and African Union, also supports Indian goals for trade relations with Africa
– AfriHub Nigeria ‘ICT parks’ use PPP arrangements to support government/HE sector reform policies
in Nigerian federal universities, while involving institutional exclusivity agreements with AfriHub for
at least 5 years
– Projects to access low‐cost bandwidth in South Africa involve apparently rival public networks
(SANReN and TENET) and private providers (e.g. Telkom, Seacom)
• Small sample illustrates the dangers of competing/cross‐cutting/duplicate
initiatives in a commercially lucrative arena – also flagging the necessity for
rigorous evaluation of the conditions for PPPs in the framework of regional and
national policies and priorities
Piyushi Kotecha

11. Conclusion
• PPPs in Southern African HE should be developed from a
current experimental base in particular countries a
comprehensive means of fostering sectoral development for
accelerated social and economic advancement in the SADC
region
• This requires
– Identification of targeted, large‐scale and fast‐tracked PPPs at national and
regional levels
– Appropriate feedback loops between the two levels to ensure the generation
of guiding frameworks and good practice models for PPP implementation
• PPPs in HE have high potential for HE and regional
development in the SADC region ‐ provided they occur in a co‐
ordinated way in line with regional priorities
Piyushi Kotecha
Chief Executive Officer,
SARUA