Excerpt
Development infrastructure projects across the global south routinely succeed on paper and fail in practice–not because the engineering is wrong, but because the operational ecosystems needed to sustain them are never built. The real gap is in what happens after handover: who runs the asset, who maintains it, and whether genuine ownership ever transfers to the institutions left in charge. Until the sector shifts its success metrics beyond construction completion, it will keep building things that nobody ends up running.
Why Development Funding Gets the Build Right but the Handover Wrong
There is a particular kind of failure in development that almost never makes it into a final evaluation report. The infrastructure works and the engineering is sound. The ribbon was cut, the photos were taken, and the project closed successfully on paper, self-congratulations from implementers and its partners echo throughout various online channels and conference presentations paired with shiny, high definition photographs.
And then, within a year or two, the asset sits unused, under-maintained, looted or quietly abandoned.
This pattern shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. Faecal sludge treatment plants across Bangladesh–somewhere between 100 and 150 of them, built with donor grants–were technically sound but underperforming, not necessarily because the engineering failed, but because the will, specific technical/operational knowledge, and systems needed to run them never transferred to the people left in charge. A landfill outside Bamako, built with significant outside investment, sits crumbling under the sun because nobody adequately considered who would be interested in and practically manage it once the construction crews left and project funding closed.
The common thread is not technical competence. It is what happens after handover and who takes ownership of the initiative.
The Delivery Trap
Most infrastructure investment in development is structured around delivery: design the asset, build the asset, demonstrate that the asset exists. Funding cycles, procurement processes, and donor reporting are all built to track this phase closely. But the much harder and longer task—operating the asset, maintaining it, training the people responsible for it on an ongoing basis, embedding it in a local institution that can sustain it—receives a fraction of the attention and funding.
One-Off Training Is Not Capacity Building
Part of the problem is design thinking that treats training and financial set-up as a one-off event rather than an ongoing relationship. A single workshop delivered at the end of a construction project does not create the operational capability needed to run a treatment plant for the next twenty years. Sustainability requires continuous, hands-on engagement and financial interest from local stakeholders: refresher training, troubleshooting support, and a genuine transfer of ownership rather than a transfer of equipment.
There is also a deeper institutional question that projects rarely ask honestly: can the government or municipality actually show that it is interested in and ready to handle what is about to be built beyond the checkbox of getting something done? If the answer is unclear, building the asset anyway does not solve the capacity gap. It just creates a more expensive version of the same problem–an unmanaged asset that consumes resources and produces nothing. Often a huge heap of concrete that displaced either community space or the natural environment–both of which are very sensitive on how to navigate throughout the construction in the first place.
What Success Could Actually Look Like
This is not an argument against infrastructure. Toilets, treatment plants, and waste systems are necessary. However, a functioning system requires the asset and the operational ecosystem around it: trained staff, ongoing technical support, viable business models, and institutions with both the mandate and the capability to maintain what they have been given.
The uncomfortable implication for the sector is that success metrics need to shift. An infrastructure project should not be considered complete at the point of construction. It should be tracked through the years that follow–whether the asset is still functioning, who is operating it, and whether the knowledge needed to run it has actually taken root.
Nobody fails at building things. The sector fails, repeatedly, at deciding who owns what happens next and why it’s being built in the first place.
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