The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa Secretariat’s inaugural meeting is currently underway in Tunis, Tunisia to establish a Project Preparation Facilities Network (PPFN).

According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), which hosts the meeting, the goal is to ensure that good ideas for energy, transportation, water and communications technology projects come to fruition thanks to a solid project preparation phase. To achieve this, the meeting will focus on the entire spectrum of activities that occur before an infrastructure project is of interest to a potential financier.

Mohamed Hassan, Coordinator of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA), has high expectations for the meeting. “We have over 25 registered participants, including 13 funding facilities, so we are looking forward to a productive two days,” he said.

In 2011 the Multilateral Development Bank Working Group of the G20 identified Project Preparation as a key constraint to development on infrastructure and growth in Africa. This resulted in an ICA to investigation into this issue further, leading the ICA to carry out an assessment of existing Project Preparation Facilities in Africa in 2012.

“The ICA has been working very hard to deal with the challenges associated with project preparation,” continued Hassan. “We have been studying the obstacles to project preparation and we have come up with several helpful tools.”

A decision was made at the 2013 ICA Annual Meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, to create a PPFN in 2014. This meeting is the first step in creating that network.  According to the AfDB, the PPFN is the next step in making it easier to complete project preparation work. By forming a network, funding facilities can share best practices and provide fund seekers with more of a one-stop-source of information.