Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are generally envisaged by countries around the world  as major innovative policy tools that will remedying the lack of dynamism in traditional public service delivery by increasing investment in infrastructure as well as improving the delivery of social services. To this end, the South African government since 1999 has adopted the use of PPPs as an integral strategy in its national and international developmental plan. However, with the growing trends in international best practice, noticeable loopholes and omissions have been observed in the existing PPP legal framework resulting in some accountability gaps. Therefore, if the government needs to compliment its developmental aspirations, there is a need to instill the confidence and competitiveness amongst bidders to use PPPs as coherent development-orientated best value tool to deliver services and infrastructures to taxpayers. This paper therefore draws attention to some of the accountability challenges resulting from the PPP legal framework and suggests some techniques that could serve as a platform for the possible review and amendment of core competencies