As part of the project being implemented by the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) to strengthen the legal capacity of the Direction de l'Appui au Secteur Privé (DASP) of the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Senegal, and more particularly its Division of Public-Private Partnerships, the ALSF provided support on April 22-26, 2013 in Dakar, Senegal in the organization of a training seminar for government and quasi-governmental employees involved in the process of public procurement.

The seminar was designed to permit a better understanding of PPP instruments in order to increase the use of PPP for the development and the management of infrastructure projects and public services in Senegal. While Senegal intends to take advantage of PPP especially to develop its infrastructure, the mechanism remains largely unknown to the public managers who have generally preferred to use traditional forms of procurement when required to initiate and implement government projects.

As part of the seminar, ALSF coordinated a training module on the content of contracts "Build-Operate-Transfer" and PPP. Legal experts addressed the following issues: fundamental principles underlying PPP, the main contract terms, risks and contractual faults, modification and termination of contracts, monitoring and control of contracts and the settlement of disputes.

This seminar was one of two components of the project implemented by the ALSF. To complete ALSF's assistance program for Senegal, ALSF is also establishing a "PPP legal hotline", permitting employees of the DASP to call upon a legal expert when additional capacity is needed for complex issues related to PPP.

Other partners of the DASP for this seminar included the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), the Mission d'Appui aux Partenariats Public-Privé (MAPPP) and the French International Technical Assistance Agency of the French Ministry of Economy and Finance (ADETEF).