6 Building on the Assets of Potential Partners

Janelle Plummer and Steve Waddell

In the pursuit of partnerships focused on achieving sustainable service improvements for the poor, municipalities must explore and expand their knowledge of the opportunities for partnering. While this book explicitly includes the private sector as a potential partner for municipal service delivery, the focus on partnerships for the poor opens up the question about which other actors should be involved in a reconstructed approach. Building on the previous discussions that highlight the importance of integrated approaches to urban management and poverty reduction, this chapter therefore considers the potential of each of the three organisational sectors (government, the private sector and civil society) in partnerships developed at the municipal level.

This chapter outlines the nature and diversity of each potential actor, their characteristics and potential roles, and the challenges they face in working together towards the delivery of services in poor urban contexts. In succession, it disaggregates these aspects in relation to municipalities, the private sector and civil society, and then considers the important roles of external agents (such as donors and specialist consultants).

In particular, this chapter considers the different types of private sector actors involved in service delivery in low-income areas. It describes the large-scale international operators generally associated with public-private partnerships (PPPs), the national level of the private sector, and the small-scale service providers, often overlooked in the PPP framework. This attempt to disentangle the various types of stakeholders within a sector is then adopted in relation to civil society, and the discussion considers some of the key stakeholders from civil society (NGOs, consumers, employees and trade unions).

The chapter argues that there are distinct and fundamental characteristics of each organisation and that effective partnerships combine the key attributes of these actors to respond effectively to the service needs of the poor. It also acknowledges that building partnerships between such different stakeholders is not easy, and stresses that it is necessary for municipal officials - and all prospective partners - to build a better understanding of the potential attributes of each stakeholder.