South-South Collaborations: A Policy Recommendation Model for Sustainable Win-Win Infrastructure Partnerships Based on Sino - Ghana and Nigeria Case.

Infrastructure procurement has been a major engagement route between China and Africa. This contributes immensely to the gradual infrastructure development seen on the continent. However, maturing discourse purports that these infrastructure collaborations lack intentionality in the continuous development of strategic guidelines and policies for effective implementation despite their uniqueness and criticality. This study proposes that an efficient approach to policy recommendations is through the political and economic analysis (PEA) of these partnerships using public-private partnership (PPP) optics. Unquestionably, these partnerships are representative of the concept of diplomatic transnational public-private partnership (DT-PPP) where infrastructure is procured through the collaboration of public (African governments) and private sector (Chinese state-owned corporations) who provide the managerial, financial, and technical resources for the project implementation. Given the quest for sustainable win-win, this study identifies strategies towards the realization of win-win in the implementation (i.e enablers of win-win) such that fairness and co-benefit, as well as interests, will be achieved. Thus, based on the PEA framework, case scenarios from Ghana and Nigeria using expert interviews identify the criticalities and best practices for the realization of these enablers at the development phase. Findings indicate more effort is required of the public sector (African host countries) in terms of people, structure/institutions, and the implementation processes. Recommendations include improvement of environmental management structures, contract administration procedures, external stakeholders/local community engagement mechanisms, knowledge and technology transfer procedures, and sector-based project operation and maintenance culture and systems. Additionally, actors must have emotional intelligence, good problem-solving abilities, and overall ensure cordial relationships for continued bilateral cooperation.