The World Economic Forum, the Global Infrastructure Hub (GI Hub) and Meridiam on Wednesday launched a new partnership to help governments across Africa build infrastructure procurement capabilities within their civil services.
The Africa Infrastructure Fellowship Program (AIFP), as the partnership is called, aims to bring governments and the private sector together to support an innovative capability building programme for public sector infrastructure professionals.
Supported by the French Government and several Multilateral Development Banks, the AIFP initiative is focused on delivering practical training and support that helps facilitate better infrastructure procurement across Africa.
The AIFP will build on current momentum on the African continent and deliver a program of tailored education and training for civil servants responsible for infrastructure procurement and delivery that will help drive much-needed reforms and increase the willingness and ability of the private sector to help deliver infrastructure projects.
Participants will undertake formal education and training, as well as placements with major private sector firms. Following completion of the program, the graduates will be supported by the Global Infrastructure Hub, itself a G20 initiative, to reform domestic infrastructure procurement processes based on the recommendations of the GI Hub’s flagship InfraCompass tool, which looks at a country’s capability to deliver infrastructure projects.
The tool itself—along with Global Infrastructure Outlook, which forecasts infrastructure investment needs and gaps globally—will be updated to include Compact with Africa countries midway through this year.
The private sector partners in the program will be announced at an event to be held in Paris at the French Foreign Affairs initiative, at the end of June.
