The African Infrastructure Fellowship Program (AIFP) announces its 2024 cohort
The African Infrastructure Fellowship Program (AIFP) recently announced its 2024 cohort of fellows, which includes 18 participants from across the continent and brings together a diverse and talented group of individuals with backgrounds in engineering, finance, law, and more. This year, the program received over 200 applications, with the 2024 fellows hailing from Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, The Gambia, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia.
The AIFP is a unique six-month capacity building program developed by the Global Infrastructure Hub (GI Hub) and Meridiam to strengthen infrastructure procurement capacity in Africa. By training government officials in procurement and governance, the program provides participants with the skills they need to attract greater private sector investment and enhance public-private partnership (PPP) capacity in Africa.
Now more than ever, there is an urgent need to increase investment in Africa. According to the World Bank’s Africa Pulse report, the pace of economic expansion in the region remains below the growth rate of the previous decade (2000–2014) and is insufficient to significantly reduce poverty. PPPs can help shorten delivery times, share risks, achieve better value for money, increase infrastructure rollout, and support innovative service delivery. However, PPPs are complex policy instruments that require high-level expertise to deliver their potential.
For this reason, the AIFP plays an important role in supporting PPP technical excellence by equipping the next generation of African officials with the tools to deliver more and better projects.
The fellows will undertake a series of masterclasses on PPPs, a two-week professional immersion aimed at applying lessons-learned during the masterclasses, and capacity building workshops hosted by multilateral development banks and other public and private entities. Additionally, they will complete the World Bank’s Global PPP Certification Program and an internship with one of the program’s private or public sector partners.
The GI Hub is pleased to continue its support of this enriching program in its new role as the global knowledge platform of PPIAF and wishes the 2024 fellows all the best.
Learn more about the program here.