About the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa

Launched at the G8 Gleneagles Summit in 2005, the role of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) is to help improve the lives and economic well-being of millions of Africa’s people through encouraging, supporting and promoting increased investment in infrastructure in Africa, from both public and private sources.

With a focus on regional programmes and initiatives, the ICA helps to facilitate infrastructure development in the water, transport, energy and ICT sectors. This recognises that many African countries lack the essential building blocks of economic progress, such as well-maintained roads and railways, access to electricity and water & sanitation.

Not a funding agency, the ICA is intended to catalyse and facilitate the financing of infrastructure projects and programmes. It also works to overcome technical and political challenges to building more infrastructure.

The ICA’s bilateral members include the G8 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US). Membership is open to all countries in the G20, and the Republic of South Africa became the first non-G8 G20 member to join the ICA, in December 2013. Multilateral members include the World Bank Group, the African Development Bank Group, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Increasingly the ICA is working to improve co-ordination among members, as well as between members and other significant sources of infrastructure development finance, such as China, India, Arab & Islamic financiers, African regional development banks and the private sector.

ICA is supported by a small Secretariat that is hosted by the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. The secretariat is funded by voluntary contributions from ICA members and staffed by a combination of permanent staff from the African Development Bank, consultants and experts on secondment from ICA member countries.