The ultimate aim of this Municipal Capacity Building Series2 is to promote effective and sustainable forms of service delivery to poor people living in urban areas in the South. While the first sourcebook in this series3 focused on the important role of communities in this process, this volume considers the current trend towards private sector involvement and the associated capacity issues at the municipal level. The intention is to promote tangible understanding of service partnerships focused on the poor - one which promotes confidence and awareness of this approach to service delivery.
This sourcebook is concerned with the municipal actor, and recognises that involving new actors, introducing new processes and adopting new forms of delivery are not easy changes for local government. The purpose of this book is to provide an exploration into the issues concerning municipal officials. The book seeks to underpin municipal capacity building for focused partnerships by:
• providing a framework for strengthening the capacity of municipal actors to bring about effective service partnerships involving the private sector;
• proposing the key elements of an integrated strategy set in the context of effective governance;
• presenting in detail the key issues involved in the formulation and implementation of meaningful service partnerships; and
• generating a source of illustrative material to enable municipal actors to better understand the main issues and to heed the lessons of their peers.
The research leading to this book has analysed and documented a number of municipal experiences of private sector involvement in the delivery of services and infrastructure.4 Case studies were drawn from Southern Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Together they provide a range of good and bad practice, illustrating the constraints of context and the importance of learning lessons through the experience of others.