The impact of Public-Private Partnerships on Zambia's economic growth and development

Abstract

Zambia has adopted Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) as a pro-poor strategy and as an innovative financing model to contribute to the narrowing of the development financing gap. Despite the growth of PPPs in Zambia, there have been no formal assessments of the impact of PPPs. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of PPPs on Zambia’s economic growth (proxied by gross domestic product {GDP}) and economic development (unemployment, household consumption and gini coefficient). The study employs quantitative method by using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model as the time series model for the 18 years period from 2000 to 2017. The study shows that PPPs positively impact GDP and economic development through spurring of economic activities, improved household consumption and employment creation. However, the study has also shown that PPPs negatively impact economic development as the PPPs increased gini coefficient (income inequalities). How to ensure broad-based progress would require additional political-economic analysis.