The Resource Mobilisation Fund, a new business initiative to address the electricity crisis, is expected to remain active for up to two years, writes Martin Kingston.
It's generally known and understood that partnerships between business and government can be difficult. Globally, however, these alliances are happening more often, largely because of the significant benefit achievable through collaboration, with research showing that common purpose is the single most important factor towards fostering partnership success.
The most recent examples of achieving common purpose between business and government were the response to Covid-19, including the establishment of the Solidarity Fund, and collaboration to ensure sufficient vaccine availability to stem the pandemic. There is now a proven model of mobilising private sector resources and expertise to ensure effective public-private collaboration.
Today, in South Africa, one of our critically urgent collective responses is to end the energy crisis.
This objective has been given an important boost through the establishment of the Resource Mobilisation Fund (RMF), which follows a request by government to help capacitate the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom), specifically to implement the President's Energy Action Plan with urgency.
The RMF, which is underpinned and driven by Business for South Africa (B4SA), has sourced philanthropic and private sector funding to procure and donate technical skills and experience to Necom, which will significantly and expeditiously boost the Energy Action Plan, and increase its momentum.
The RMF is centred on the private sector's core capabilities, including the sourcing and delivery of crucial technical knowledge-based assistance, supported by the necessary funding. The RMF has secured funding commitments from local and international corporate and philanthropic donors to the value of R100 million. This will enable the best possible expertise to be sourced and rapidly contributed to Necom.
Initially, it will address five specific urgent procurement priorities, as determined by Necom: programme management capabilities; legal expertise; communications support; energy policy skills; and energy modelling expertise.
A Memorandum of Understanding has been entered into between government and the RMF that gives the RMF the autonomy to raise, and disburse funds, and to procure these specialised services.
Necom has also identified four other critical capacity requirements, which are: the engagement of an economist who has expertise in tariff design and regulation; power station management engineering experience; business process engineering and organisational design expertise; and IT specialist support. These nine skill sets will be integrated into the existing Necom work streams.
The RMF is not involved in addressing the energy crisis directly, which is the role of government, and neither does the RMF undertake any policy advocacy.
With our focus on capacitating government, we are working closely with several partners, including KPMG and ENS, who have defined the governance framework and drafted the procurement policy; as well as the National Business Initiative (NBI) and Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) to procure, screen, contract, deploy, mentor and support the requisite technical capacity and the requisite administrative support.
These organisations are crucial and credible cogs that understand the complex interactions required to accelerate progress and the need for accountability and transparency in all its activities.
We anticipate the RMF being active for up to two years, which will give our government a solid foundation to accelerate the Energy Action Plan, to help reduce hurdles and assist in alleviating the threats to economic progress by harnessing specialist skills and experience that can properly capacitate key workstreams.
The creation of the RMF to help capacitate Necom is a positive outcome of effective collaboration between government and business. Increasing efforts around working together as a collective can continue to help unlock and deliver many other similar practical, and impactful solutions our country urgently needs.
Martin Kingston is chairperson of the Resource Mobilisation Fund (RMF) and Business for South Africa (B4SA). News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.