Building Between Public and Private
What effective cross-sector collaboration requires beyond meetings and MoUs.
A signed memorandum of understanding is not a partnership. It is a starting point that still has to be built into one.
Connected Ecosystems
A signature is not a partnership.
Public-private collaboration is often measured by its ceremonies: the signed agreement, the joint press release, the photograph of a handshake. These mark intent. They rarely mark the harder work of actually building a working relationship between institutions with different incentives, timelines and accountability structures.
Durable cross-sector collaboration is built through repeated delivery, not a single agreement.
Government moves on electoral and policy cycles; business moves on quarterly and investment cycles. Making the two work together requires people on both sides who can translate between those cycles, build trust over time, and keep a shared initiative alive between the moments of public attention.
That translation role is often invisible in the public narrative of a partnership, but it is usually what determines whether a signed agreement becomes a functioning programme or a framed document.
Collaborations that move beyond the signature tend to have:
- a small team on each side responsible for maintaining the relationship between major milestones;
- shared, measurable outcomes rather than only shared intentions;
- mechanisms for resolving disagreement without the collaboration breaking down publicly;
- individuals who are trusted by both sides, and who stay involved as administrations and leadership change.
The Scale of the Opportunity
Private participation in public infrastructure is growing again.
According to World Bank data, private investment in infrastructure (PPI) reached $100.7 billion in 2024, an increase of roughly 16% year-on-year. The scale of capital involved raises the stakes for getting the collaboration itself right—the cost of a partnership that stalls after signing is no longer just reputational.
More capital moving through public-private structures means more value is lost when the follow-through fails.
Why Partnerships Stall
The same obstacles recur across sectors and geographies.
- Misaligned incentives. Public and private partners are frequently optimising for different outcomes on different timelines.
- Unclear ownership. No single accountable owner on one or both sides to keep the initiative moving between milestones.
- Weak preparation. Agreements signed before feasibility, financing and regulatory questions are genuinely resolved.
- Limited institutional capacity. Public-sector teams stretched too thin to manage complex, multi-year collaborations.
- Discontinuity. Elections, reorganisations and leadership turnover interrupt institutional memory and momentum.
Most of these obstacles are predictable. Partnerships that plan for them in advance survive them; partnerships that assume goodwill will be enough usually do not.
The AjoAje Collaboration Framework
Six stages carry a partnership from intention to sustained results.
Agree the specific problem or opportunity the collaboration exists to address.
Reconcile incentives, timelines and expectations across both sides before signing anything.
Set governance, accountable owners and decision rights for the life of the partnership.
Move from agreement to funded, resourced, operating activity.
Track shared, agreed outcomes—not just activity or attendance.
Protect continuity through leadership change, and keep the relationship active between milestones.
Most failed partnerships skip straight from Define to Activate. The stages in between are where trust and durability are actually built.
The Role of Trusted Intermediaries
Some gaps between public and private actors are best closed by a credible third party.
Intermediaries who are trusted by both government and business can translate incentives, broker early-stage alignment, and stay involved as a continuity mechanism when individual officials or executives move on. They do not replace the direct relationship between public and private partners—they make it easier to build.
An intermediary's value lies in local legitimacy and sustained presence, not in the number of meetings they convene.
The AjoAje Perspective
The test of a partnership is not the signing. It is the review a year later.
AjoAje treats cross-sector collaboration as infrastructure that has to be maintained, not an event that concludes at the ceremony. The honest measure of any partnership is whether it produced implementation and results, not whether it produced a signature.
An agreement earns the word "partnership" only after it has survived its first real disagreement.
“An MoU is an intention. A working relationship is what turns it into a result.”
The AjoAje question: if we reviewed every partnership we have announced, how many would show clear evidence of implementation and results?
— AjoAje Insights
Key Takeaways
- Signing is the easy part. The harder, more valuable work of cross-sector collaboration happens after the agreement.
- The stakes are rising. World Bank data shows private infrastructure investment reached $100.7 billion in 2024, up roughly 16% year-on-year.
- Failure points are predictable. Misaligned incentives, unclear ownership, weak preparation, limited capacity and discontinuity recur across sectors.
- A six-stage framework helps. Define, Align, Structure, Activate, Measure and Sustain each need deliberate attention—not just the ends of the chain.
- Trusted intermediaries add value. A credible third party can bridge incentives and protect continuity through leadership change.
- Outcomes should be measurable and shared. Collaboration sustained by shared results outlasts collaboration sustained only by shared intentions.
Evidence base: World Bank, Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) Annual Report 2024.
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