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The best PPP may be the one that restores what you already have
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There was already a port. The quays were there. The railway was there. The channel was there. The cranes were there. More or less. What was missing was cargo. In 2003, Mozambique handed the Port of Maputo to a public-private concessionaire. Yes… You know. PPP are not just roads and hospitals… It was a BOT model… where the B was probably more R of Rehabilitation. Well… At the time, the port was handling approximately 5 million tonnes per year. Last year, it handled around 32 million. Six times more. The navigation channel has been deepened. Berths have been rehabilitated. Equipment has been replaced. Larger ships can enter. And the port has recovered its role as a gateway for Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the wider region. The infrastructure mattered. Of course. But the real transformation came from something less impressive in a photograph. Management. Incentives. A long-term master plan. Commercial discipline. Investment linked to demand. Operational expertise. And shareholders who understood that a port is not a collection of sad concrete structures looking at the sea… and no beach. It is a service. The concessionaire improved the port. Traffic grew. It invested again. Larger vessels arrived. More traffic followed. That may be the most important lesson. Infrastructure projects are often planned as one enormous act of faith. Predict demand for 30 years. Build everything. Borrow everything. And pray. Maputo followed a more commercial logic. Invest. Operate. Learn. Grow. Invest again. The port was already there. The value was not. That had to be managed into existence. More about PPPs below. ​THE ROOM: 15 Great Lessons of a Successful PPP Project​ ​THE ROOM: The 15 Top Lessons of a PPP Project Nightmare​ ​THE ROOM: How to Break Into PPPs (Without the Bullshit)​ ​The ROOM: The ONLY way of doing a proper procurement process​ ​THE ROOM: Back-to-Back PPP Gap Analysis Explained​ ​THE ROOM: The Top 10 Errors That Kill Your PPP Deal​ ​THE ROOM: How to Deal with Frustrating Lenders' Approvals in PPPs.​ ​THE ROOM: THE ROOM: Minimum size for a PPP Project​ ​THE ROOM: Buildings in PPP - Discussions with an African colleague​ ​THE ROOM: Key Challenges and Solutions in PPP Highway Projects - 5 Clauses You Should Improve​ Or… of course, you can have them all… and many other interesting lessons in The Room. ​The Room​ PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Final bid phase. BAFO. Best and Final Offer. Beautiful name, by the way. And my favourite thing ever… It’s not just that people show their faces under their masks… It sounds clean. Professional. Almost elegant. Like everyone is now putting their best offer on the table, shaking hands mentally, and preparing for a fair final comparison. Cute. Then a few smart guys decided to be very smart. Too smart. They started sneaking small changes into the agreement. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that looked...
Dakar–Diamniadio. A toll road. It reduced a journey of around 90 minutes to approximately 25. It opened on time. Within budget. Traffic exceeded expectations. And it became one of Africa’s best-known PPP case studies. So, naturally, “experts” looked at the contract. The financing. The risk allocation. The concessionaire. All important. But many were missing the secret sauce. Senegal spent around ten years preparing the project before the road opened. Ten years. Not ten PowerPoint...
I have a friend. A colleague. She is very interested in putting her knowledge to work. On her own. In the consulting space. I always tell her that selling air conditioners probably has a much better future. You know. Climate change. Installation fees. Recurring maintenance revenue. All that. But she loves infrastructure. Let her be. She wanted to know how to create a service for a particular government agency. My answer was simple. Ask them what they need. Do not spend three months creating a...