An ad hoc meeting of experts from West Africa on "Innovative financing for the structural transformation of the West African economies" will be held on February 23-24, 2016 at the King Fahd Hotel in Dakar. It is being organised by the West Africa Sub-Regional Office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, in cooperation with the Government of the Republic of Senegal, together with the Regional Economic Communities (REC).
Taking part in this meeting will be experts from 15 Member states of West Africa, those of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and of the Mano River Union (MRU), as well as representatives from key institutions, including the private sector and civil society, working in the area of development financing and structural transformation in West Africa.
Innovative financing, considered to be one of the most promising solutions to respond to the development needs of Africa, provide additional funds by exploiting an unexplored potential. This includes the mobilisation of non-traditional means to assemble funds for development. It thus provides a response to the defects and the decline in traditional official development assistance.
The main objective assigned to this Ad-Hoc Experts Group Meeting is to analyse the options available and the status of innovative financing mechanisms in West Africa, discuss the major constraints and challenges posed for their development and identify strategies for consolidating these arrangements then optimizing their contributions to the structural transformation of the economies of the sub-region.
On the basis of the review of the report written by the Sub-Regional Office of the ECA for West Africa, the participants will be able to specifically: (i) discuss the problem of development financing in West Africa and identify the related opportunities and constraints, gaps and deficiencies; (ii) proceed with an inventory of options in terms of innovative financing that could accompany the structural transformation of West Africa, discuss their advantages and disadvantages as well as their adaptability to the environment of the sub-region; (iii) draw up a status report on the experiences of countries and RECs of the sub-region in terms of innovative financing mechanisms, indicating the most common types, the key actors of supply and demand, the volumes of investments, the implications, lessons learned and good practises; (iv) discuss the constraints and challenges related to the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of initiatives on innovative financing mechanisms for the development and structural transformation of the sub-region; (v) analyse, on the basis of the experiences of the ECOWAS countries and elsewhere, the conditions for success and diagnose the factors, challenges and structural constraints on the optimisation of the contribution of innovative financing in favour of the structural transformation of the economies of the ECOWAS countries.
In addition, the West African Ad Hoc Experts Group Meeting will issue relevant recommendations for decision-makers and other stakeholders for the consolidation of innovative financing and the optimisation of their contribution to the process of the development of the sub-region.
In particular, to mobilise innovative financing for its development, West Africa should strengthen its local financial markets which remain poorly developed, superficial and small in size and where long-term financing with maturities adapted to infrastructure projects are rare. Such a development should be accompanied by the implementation of financial engineering and an adequate regulatory framework, the adoption of a pro-active policy on the part of the public authorities and above all, the human, technical and institutional means necessary.
Similarly, the new trends in development financing in West Africa range from stimulating direct investment by the private sector, foreign as well as local, to the promotion of diverse forms of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), as well as the development of innovative forms of resource mobilisation including issuing bonds on the national, regional and international financial markets, the mobilisation of investment funds and recourse to development banks. Local capital markets should play an increasingly important role through loans granted by commercial banks, certain corporate bonds and shares, as well as the intervention of international investors, notably pension funds and insurance companies.
