Representatives from government, multilateral development banks, the private sector, and civil society converge in Abidjan this week for the Second Regional Roundtable on Infrastructure Governance and Tools. The event aims to boost infrastructure investment by addressing governance gaps and showcasing tools for better project assessment, transparency, fiscal analysis, and capacity building.

Co-hosted by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB), the roundtable includes a webcast high-level political session, plenary sessions on hot-topic issues, break-out sessions featuring case studies of successful and replicable projects, and several sessions devoted to concrete tools to build a future-fit infrastructure on the African continent.

Taking place on June 21-22, the event continues the ambitious course set by the successful first roundtable held in Cape Town in November 2017. This roundtable targets francophone Africa; more roundtables will follow in other regions in the coming year.

The roundtable’s keynote speaker, Pascale Dubois, Vice President of Integrity at the World Bank Group underlines the event’s salience. “To date, the public sector has provided the bulk of infrastructure investment, given its inherent public-goods nature. Yet resources are strained across the world, as fiscal vulnerabilities rise. At the same time, governments are also committed to delivering the Sustainable Development Goals, which link to infrastructure in a very important way.” She continued, “We must face reality: funding from development institutions and donors is unlikely to fill the infrastructure gap. We want to help ensure that projects are commercially viable and attractive to the private sector, fiscally sustainable, represent value for money, implementable—as well as procured and maintained with integrity.”

The roundtable’s panels will address pressing questions such as:

• What are the main governance issues and bottlenecks to successful infrastructure investments?
• What are the key capacities governments must focus on?
• What should be included in a strategic plan for a long-term infrastructure vision?

Open discussion sessions will focus on challenges including maximizing finance for development; stakeholder management and consultation; climate impact on infrastructure; fiscal challenges in infrastructure procurement; and unblocking pipelines through better coordination.

In addition to Dubois from the World Bank and Guislain from AfDB, participants include Hassoumi Massoudou, Minister of Finance of Niger, Gontran Djono Ahaba, Minister of Development of Energy and Hydraulic Resources from the Central African Republic, Abdoubaker Omar Hadi, President of the Ports Authority and Free Zone, Senator Sirika Hadi, Minister for State Aviation of Nigeria, and Theodore Jousso Minister of Transport and Aviation of the Central African Republic.  Thomas Barrett, Chairman of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s Infrastructure Forum; Adama Kone, Minister of Finance, Cote D’Ivoire; Charles-Henri Malecot, STOA; Sydney Domoraud, Managing Partner, EMIRE Partners; and Tafadzwa Pasipanodya, Foley Hoag.

The opening session of the event will be webcast at 9:00 am GMT.

About the Regional Roundtables

The Regional Roundtables on Infrastructure Governance respond to the call to action from the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement (2015 COP21). They were created by the World Bank Group in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the African Legal Support Facility, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Global Infrastructure Hub, the Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung Foundation , New Partnership for Africa's Development, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility.