The Public Private Partnerships and Inclusive Housing in Masvingo, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Urban problems are becoming too serious to leave solely in the hands of government authorities who have no capacity to solve all them. There is therefore need for partnerships that can help in the delivery of services for increased production, safety and livability in urban areas. Partnerships have been necessitated by the need to draw resources such as wisdom and finances from all parties concerned to overcome contemporary urban predicaments. The adoption of Public, Private Partnerships (PPPs) is seen as the way to address the poor service delivery. This paper examines how the concept of PPPs has been used in the delivery of inclusive housing in the city of Masvingo. The research adopted a mainly qualitative methodology to the inquiry, where indepth interviews and field observations were employed. The inquiry established that a lot of stakeholders were involved in Victoria Ranch Housing Scheme in Masvingo city. This has helped to make houses available to the generality of people in the City. However, the housing scheme has excluded the urban poor as the private sector developers hijacked it in their bid to maximize profits. This drove the urban poor out of the scheme as houses were priced beyond their capacity. The situation was worsened by the fact that the government did not provide a framework of how the scheme could include the city inhabitants. There is therefore need to re-engineer the concept of PPPs to introduce a moderator in the form a high authority who will make sure that there is a balance between the need for provision of the public good and the need to make profits from public good investments.