Feminist Africa

Public-Private Partnership: A Landmark of Mainstream Development Discourse and Why Feminists Should Worry

Corina Rodriguez Enriquez — 2023-11-30

Overview of Public-Private Partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa: Emerging Risks and Narratives

Sue Godt — 2024-06-18

Powerful global actors including international finance institutions, multilaterals and funders promote neoliberal policies across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), prioritising public-private partnerships (PPPs). Assumptions are that private sector resources will solve public sector deficiencies and ensure effective and efficient development and service delivery. SSA governments are creating required PPP-enabling environments to attract such investments. This article reports on a desk review of 128 academic and grey literature documents about SSA PPP development covering the period 2013-2022. Rather than present a detailed audit, the article identifies risks and narratives at both population and State levels emerging from PPPs across diverse countries and sectors.This initial overview contributes to building an evidence base about PPP risks and can be used to inform a comprehensive feminist analysis of PPPs. It also sets the context for the more specific case studies and articles in this issue of Feminist Africa.

Accelerating PPP costs shrink fiscal and policy space, undermining government efforts to drive national development priorities. Negative effects on employment, livelihoods and access to services exacerbate burdens for disadvantaged women, as they assume increased unpaid care responsibilities when healthcare and education services decline, and as they support families with fewer productive resources. Citizen-state relationships and national sovereignty weaken as States are increasingly accountable to financial actors. There are, however, some signs of a growing momentum to reclaim the role of the State and to make an accountable public sector work in the interest of the people.

Public-Private Partnerships, Gender Equality, and Women’s Rights in Sierra Leone: A Focus on Addax Bioenergy by Hussainatu J. Abdullah

Hussainatu J. Abdullah — 2024-06-18

This article argues that public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a vehicle for financing public infrastructure are antithetical to long-term social development, including women’s rights and gender equality, because of their profit-oriented focus. A case study of Addax Bioenergy Sierra Leone (ABSL) illustrates this point. ABSL is a partnership between the Sierra Leonean government and a private sector entity to expand the country’s electricity supply using cane bagasse from ethanol distilling. The project’s objectives were short-lived due to several factors, including the project funders’ lack of transparency and accountability. At the community level, ABSL’s land acquisition, labour, and production practices reinforced gender-based discrimination and affected women’s rights to resources and livelihoods. In more specific terms, women lost access to fertile lands for agricultural production, which affected the food security of their households. In addition, they experienced an increased workload. The contamination of water resources also affected women more disproportionately than men. This study, therefore, argues that PPPs bent on profit maximisation are detrimental to achieving social development and gender equality and stifle women’s advancement in society.

A Gendered Approach to Public-Private Partnerships in University Student Housing Provision – The Case of South Africa

Hlengiwe Ndlovu — 2024-06-18

Student housing is a booming business in many African countries as evidenced by the growing rental property market for students in neighbourhoods surrounding campuses of tertiary institutions. This paper casts a light on the need to rethink gender-fair public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the context of student housing, which has in some cases proven to be a site of violence against female students given its profit-driven motive. Using a feminist lens, we seek to answer the question: in what ways can PPPs strike a balance between providing much-needed student housing and addressing gendered imbalances in current student housing provision models? We relied on an analysis of published and unpublished literature on student housing provision and the role of PPPs in the higher education sector. The discussion demonstrates ways in which PPP arrangements can have gendered implications, impacting students differently based on their racial and gender identities and sexuality. It also argues for a framework that guides norms and standards of student housing to make it inclusive of marginalised students and to mitigate potential harm to tertiary students.

Accounting for Class and Feminist Political Economy: Questions Emanating from Ghana’s Market PPPs

Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey — 2024-06-18

Capital, through neoliberal development, is finding spaces in the informal economy, which was traditionally unattractive for capital investment. Recently, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Ghana have surged given the increasing sovereign debt and economic crisis. Drawing on qualitative methods, and framed within a feminist political economy perspective, this paper examines the impacts of PPPs in a local market in Ghana and the ramifications for the women, the space, and the future of the market. We use the construction of some market structures in a market in Ghana built on a Build Operate Transfer PPP model to illustrate how local government’s top-down decision-making processes exclude women, foist on them decisions that adversely impact their economic autonomy and social relations, and deepen the class structure among them. We detail the contradicting ways the market leadership and their followers differed in their responses to the project and how this difference led to tensions among the traders. By examining the local Assembly’s political strategy to weaken the women’s resistance to policies in the market through the allocation of sheds to commodity leaders, we also hint at the uncertainty of sustained collective mobilisation in the market which is open to many more neoliberal experiments

The Public-Private Partnerships Dilemma in Uganda.

Penelope Sanyu — 2024-06-19

Public-Private Partnerships in the Health Sector Cannot Guarantee Equity in Access to Health: The Initiative for Social and Economic Rights Takes on the Ugandan Government.

Corina Rodriguez Enriquez — 2024-06-19

The Nawi Afrifem Collective: Bringing a Pan-African Feminist Voice to Macro-Level Economic Narratives in Africa

Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey — 2024-06-19

African Women in Digital Spaces Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora by Msia Kibona Clark and Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers Ltd, 2023

Amanda Odoi — 2024-06-19

Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa, edited by Desiree Lewis and Gabeba Baderoon. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2021

Mardiya Siba Yahaya — 2024-06-19

Tribute to Professor Ama Ata Aidoo

Takyiwaa Manuh — 2024-06-19

Ama Ata Aidoo:The Pioneering Writer from Ghana left Behind a String of Feminist Classics

Rose A. Sackeyfio — 2024-06-19