Why PPPs Die in Negotiations Until Trust Breaks Through

Mwelwa Kenneth Chibesakunda, Kasempa | 3 November, 2025 — Nine out of ten proposed Public Private Partnerships in Zambia never reach groundbreaking. They die in negotiations where institutions demand protection from risks they refuse to share. Kasempa District's Mutanda-Kasempa-Kaoma Road now exists because Pangaea Securities, Western Corridor Limited, and First Quantum Minerals broke that pattern. They chose trust over self-protection.

My work at Financial Insight Zambia has given me the privilege of handling difficult assignments in remote places. Kasempa District became my latest destination when the #MediaMachine made landfall for the Mutanda-Kasempa-Kaoma Road groundbreaking ceremony. Local residents had awaited this PPP project for years and conversations with them revealed extreme excitement about this development.

Coverage done by the Media Machine has rarely featured PPPs that had reached commercial close and seen groundbreaking. Projects like these can take a long time, especially in jurisdictions such as ours with evolving PPP legislation. Years of negotiations, technical assessments, and financial modelling shaped this road project. More significantly, it represents a willingness from government, private investors, and mining interests to allocate risk in ways that make each party uncomfortable. However, that discomfort is precisely what makes PPPs so difficult to execute.

Trust As the Foundation

Speaking to Pangaea Securities, folks at Project Company Western Corridor Limited and First Quantum Minerals, one aspect emerged as critical: trust. All counterparties in developing PPPs must trust each other, with risk allocated to parties best placed to handle it. Government authorities must trust that private investors will not cut corners, while private investors must trust that government will not change regulatory requirements halfway through construction. Mining companies, in turn, must trust that both parties will create conditions protecting their operational interests. Each relationship depends on the others, creating an interdependent web where one broken link collapses the entire structure.

Most PPPs collapse because institutions protect themselves by demanding contractual provisions that shift risk onto other parties. Legal teams draft documents anticipating every possible failure scenario, which transforms what should be collaborative processes into adversarial negotiations. Projects reach a state of being too expensive and complicated to proceed once all parties have finished protecting themselves through increasingly complex contracts.

How Kasempa Broke the Pattern

Mutanda-Kasempa-Kaoma Road avoided this trap because key players recognised that excessive self-protection would kill the project. What they chose to do is move forward with manageable risk rather than wait for impossible guarantees. Contractors brought reputations they were willing to stake on successful execution and developed enough mutual confidence to sign contracts requiring shared vulnerability.

Such willingness to proceed stands in stark contrast to most proposed PPPs, which never reach commercial close precisely because parties cannot move past their need for perfect protection. Without trust, projects remain stuck in feasibility studies and regulatory reviews while government treasuries lack the capital to fund them independently and private investors see insufficient returns to justify the uncertainty. The cycle perpetuates itself: no trust means no progress, and no progress reinforces the reluctance to trust.

Lessons For Future Projects

Success of this project demonstrates that PPPs can reach groundbreaking when parties prioritise collaboration over self-protection. The question for Zambia's next infrastructure projects is whether institutions can replicate what happened in Kasempa.

Can government, investors, and mining companies choose trust again?

Interviews we conducted will be broadcast on Financial Insight Zambia's YouTube channel, showing how this project overcame obstacles that stop most PPPs. Communities waiting for infrastructure now have proof that trust works better than contracts.