Public-private infrastructure working group to meet in Dakar on 11 May 2009
6 May 2009
The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa will host a meeting of its Public-Private Infrastructure Working Group in Dakar on 11 May 2009.
The event, which will be held in conjunction with the US Treasury and the African Development Bank (AfDB), will take place just before the African Development Bank’s annual meetings in the Senegalese capital.
The Working Group, which was inaugurated in October 2008 at a symposium hosted in Washington by the US Treasury, promotes a frank dialogue between the private sector, government officials and development assistance providers on the barriers to private investment in African infrastructure.
The meeting in Dakar will continue the Group’s focus on the power sector, where the priority is closing Africa’s power infrastructure finance gap – which requires an estimated $29 billion per year in capital expenditure over the next ten years. Mobilising private investment is crucial if this level of investment is to be achieved.
Participants will include senior executives for power project developers and financiers, African Ministers of Finance and Energy, and representatives from the AfDB, the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and European Investment Bank (EIB).
Working Group participants will discuss prospective regional and national power investments, which will be presented by project sponsors. Private participants will identify what they see as the barriers for each project reaching financial closure, while African officials from stakeholder countries will relate what political and policy constraints they are likely to face.
Private sector participants will discuss how the on-going global economic crisis is affecting how they select and finance projects. African government officials will share how the crisis is affecting their public finances and ability to co-finance power projects.
The meeting will be co-chaired by Mandla Gantsho (Vice President, Infrastructure Private Sector and Regional Integration, AfDB) and Andy Baukol (Deputy Assistant Secretary, Middle East and Africa, U.S.Treasury).