A five-day training on Public Private Partnerships (PPP) organised by the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) started on November 2, 2015 at the African Development Bank offices in Abidjan. The workshop is intended to provide 35 government officials from 10 francophone African States with the capacity to structure PPP projects in an effort to efficiently bridge Africa's infrastructure financing needs.
The workshop is being co-organised with the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), through its corporate university, the CEFEB, Expertise France, the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) whose representatives also made statements highlighting the importance of capacity development in PPPs.
In a statement read on behalf of Charles Boamah, the Chairman of the Governing Council of the ALSF, Stephen Karangizi, Director of the ALSF emphasised the need to equip officials with the appropriate skills so that they are in a position to deal with the complexity of PPPs. He added that institutional structures as well as regulatory and legal frameworks on PPP are critical for the successful implementation of PPPs.
Addressing participants, Isaac Dé, Advisor of the President of the National Steering Committee of Public-Private Partnership of the Côte d'Ivoire government stated that an operating environment with functioning institutions will more likely attract foreign investors.
In attendance are regulators, private and public lawyers, professional services practitioners and financiers from Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, the Central African Republic, Senegal, Chad and UEMOA.
The participants will go through principles of structuring PPPs, legal frameworks, and contracting models for PPP entities and PPP financing.
Previous training sessions under the Nomadic training program were held in Abidjan, November in 2012, Johannesburg in June 2013, Dakar in November 2013, and Nairobi in July 2015. The next session will be held in Lomé, Togo from November 23-27, 2015.
Thematic workshops in energy, transport and urban services sectors will soon held at the headquarters of CEFEB in Marseille, France.