Effective regional infrastructure delivery in Africa : an analysis of the financial skills of the technical staff

Abstract

During the last fifteen years, it has become apparent that capacity building is an important ingredient for sustainable development. In this regard, governments in Africa rank capacity building for infrastructure delivery amongst the top priorities for promoting sustainable development. A large share of Africa’s infrastructure is domestically financed, with the central government budget being the main driver of infrastructure investment. It is, therefore, important to strengthen the finance and technical capacity of public sector officials to effectively manage the preparation, structuring, implementation and operations and maintenance of infrastructure. In the quest to improve the infrastructure delivery capacity of public sector officials, this dip stick survey has assessed and highlighted gaps in terms of limited working knowledge of financial instruments, products and services such as viability gap finance and partial risk guarantees, as well as different financing models including fixed and floating interest rate borrowing from DFIs. All officials interviewed confirmed the importance of prioritizing finance training in the areas of selection, preparation and appraisal of investment projects.