An Investigation of the Factors Affecting the Success of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP); A Case of Infrastructural Development of Thika Road in Kenya

Abstract

Public-Private Partnership is PPPs are are institutional relationships between the state and the private for-profit and or not for-profit sector where they participate in defining objectives, the methods and implementation of an agreement of cooperation. Due to the endeavours by the government on the infrastructural development, the researcher's interest was raised to assess the factors that affect the success of such efforts with specificity to Thika road. The researcher sought to investigate on the factors that affect the success of infrastructural developments in Kenya with specifics on the effects of governance, political influences, and recipient public's perception on the success of Public-Private Partnerships in the infrastructural development in Kenya. This study will be of great significance to the Government of Kenya, private investors and to those students who may be interested in conducting research in a related area. The research study was conducted on the affected communities along the Thika Road, Specifically, Ruiru, and Juja. This study has a descriptive design which involved no manipulation of variables, but only reporting by description as the issues have taken place. The total population consisted of 20,500 households, 5868 businesses and 347 employees of Sinohydro Construction Company. This made 26715 subjects. From this population a sample of 50 respondents was selected proportionate to the distribution within the population according to the categories and the area of operation. All these respondents were issued with a questionnaire purposefully as they were scattered within the town centers along the road. Only simple random sampling was conducted to select the employees of Sinohydro Construction Company as they were accessible easily and conveniently. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire, which had both open ended and closed-ended questions. The questionnaire was pretested on five respondents to check on the appropriateness of the questions and assist in development of the appropriate method of analysis. The questionnaire was then be distributed through hand delivery and picked afterwards as agreed for analysis. After collecting the information, data was coded, summarized analyzed using descriptive statistics. The summary of the data was tabulated for presentation of the findings. MS Excel and MS Word was very useful in the presentation and analysis of the data. The findings were that, the construction of Thika road affected many residents and businesses as well. This is evidenced by 60% of the respondents were affected directly. Legal framework and government procurement procedures affected the construction more with a rating of 34% each, while the PPPs policies by the government affected least with a rating of 32%. Political goodwill had the greatest effect on the construction with a rating of 43%. Community perception on the success of Public-Private Partnerships in the construction of Thika road it was found that economic benefit to the community was the most influencing factor on the construction of Thika road with a rating of 37%.