Donors supporting the New Partnership for Africa's Development Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility (NEPAD-IPPF), a multi-donor funded Special Fund hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB), have welcomed the improved performance of NEPAD-IPPF.
Speaking on behalf of other donors at the 23rd Oversight Committee (OC) of the Special Fund held at the AfDB's headquarters in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, on Thursday, December 10, 2015, Edmond Wega of Canada, who is Chairman of the OC, commended the new Management and staff of NEPAD-IPPF for improved performance. Donor partners supporting the Special Fund are: Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark and Norway. He also commended the renewed commitment by the African Development Bank President, Akinwumi Adesina, to re-position NEPAD-IPPF into a well-resourced and stronger Facility, better able to respond to the growing project preparation needs of Africa.
NEPAD-IPPF was established in response to the pledge of the G8 countries in Kananaskis, Canada, at the 28th G8 Summit to support the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the "Africa Action Plan". This was in recognition of the fact that inadequate infrastructure was seen as one of the most critical and binding constraints to Africa's sustainable development. In particular, the concern was that Africa was not attracting the desired investments and financing into infrastructure despite clear demand and a large financing gap, largely due to the lack of sufficient bankable projects which could attract financing.
In response, NEPAD-IPPF was set up in 2005 and hosted by the AfDB with a focus on supporting African regional members countries (RMCs) through specialized institutions such as the regional economic communities (RECs), power pools (PPs), corridor agencies (CAs), river basin organizations (RBOs) and other specialised infrastructure organisations (SIOs) to prepare regional infrastructure projects in energy, transport, ICT and trans-boundary water and to facilitate mobilization of financing to implement these projects.
Over the 10-year period up to October 2015, contributions by donor partners including AfDB amounted to US $91.5 million out of which US $75 million had been committed to the preparation of 61 projects of which half have reached financial closure. NEPAD-IPPF has, over the years, also provided technical assistance support to RMCs, RECs and PPs to strengthen their capacities to manage regional projects. In commending the improved performance of NEPAD-IPPF, the donors noted that 2015 had been one of the best years for the Special Fund with disbursements having increased from US $3.175 million in 2014 to US $8.404 million in 2015 and likely to reach US $10 million by year-end.
The OC also endorsed the strategic thrust, orientation and focus of the new NEPAD-IPPF Strategic Business Plan (SBP), which will inform the operations of the Special Fund for the next five-year period, 2016-2020. Under the new SBP, NEPAD-IPPF will move away from general capacity-building interventions to focus on the core business of project preparation and development - that is, financing the preparation of pre-feasibility, feasibility, and detailed designs of regional infrastructure projects.
Another new feature of the NEPAD-IPPF business model is to link project preparation to mobilization of financing by ensuring that potential financiers are engaged at the early stage of project preparation and participate in shaping the project enabling environment to make projects investment-ready.
