The challenge of how to address Africa’s massive $100 billion annual infrastructure deficit is a step closer to being met, following a three-year project by the World Economic Forum aimed at promoting public-private cooperation and identifying solutions to the bottlenecks that cause large infrastructure projects in the region to fail.

The Forum-led Africa Strategic Infrastructure Initiative (ASII) was launched in 2012 and has consisted of two phases.

Supporting delivery of African infrastructure

Apart from project prioritisation and acceleration, the initiative has continued to develop innovative ideas and informative publications that support the delivery of African infrastructure.

There is a paradox within infrastructure financing: while there is plenty of private-sector interest in financing bankable projects, the available project-preparation resources are insufficient to advance the projects to a bankable state.

This means the pipeline of well-prepared projects is meagre, and investment opportunities are limited.

A Principled approach to project preparation

A new report called A Principled Approach to Project Preparation, prepared in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and launched on Monday, outlines a new approach to Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility (IPPF).

It involves enhancing private-public collaboration during the earlier stages of projects, and designing them for effective and sustainable operation.

“Early-stage project preparation and financing has been a perennial problem with African infrastructure projects, with the private sector understandably wary of contributing financially during early stages,” said Patrick Dlamini, Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Co-Chair of the ASII.

“However, we are confident that with a well-designed IPPF, we can now offer investors a reassuring vehicle that will enable us to bring them on board as early as possible.”