RESOURCES/FEATURED STORIES

PPIAF Provides Programmatic support to UEMOA

01 December 2014
PPIAF Provides Programmatic support to UEMOA
The Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA) countries are facing a shared challenge of raising growth, reducing poverty, improving competitiveness and creating significant levels of new employment. Developing world class infrastructure is critical for meeting these challenges, but the deficit of high quality infrastructure and service delivery continues to grow in these countries amidst continued fiscal constraints and inadequate management of existing infrastructure and services. To tackle these challenges all of the UEMOA countries expressed the need for strong support for

The Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA) countries are facing a shared challenge of raising growth, reducing poverty, improving competitiveness and creating significant levels of new employment. Developing world class infrastructure is critical for meeting these challenges, but the deficit of high quality infrastructure and service delivery continues to grow in these countries amidst continued fiscal constraints and inadequate management of existing infrastructure and services.

To tackle these challenges all of the UEMOA countries expressed the need for strong support for their individual PPP programs. However, they also understand there is significant value in working collaboratively together by learning from each other, sharing capabilities and presenting their countries to investors in a united way with a broadly consistent investment framework.

The 16th head of States conference which took place on June, 6, 2012 asked the UEMOA Commission to promote PPPs in the region. At a meeting held in Paris in October 2012, in the presence of the French Minister of Finance and the World Bank Vice President for Africa, the Franc Zone Ministers acknowledged the importance of strengthened institutions for PPP, the need for a regional dialog and convened to further elaborate on regional propositions within a year.

In response to this country and regional level demand, PPIAF and the World Bank established a strong partnership with Agence Française de Développement (AFD) to promote PPPs in the UEMOA Region. 

While this partnership draws in part on existing resources such as AFD programs and existing PPIAF grants, there are many gaps in the current provision and there has not been a coherent programmatic attempt to address the development of PPPs region-wide. In this context PPIAF prepared a programmatic engagement for the UEMOA region in partnership with AFD and the World Bank.  Inspired by the Feuille de Route, their program will adopt a ‘twin-track’ approach of working at both the regional and country level.  This program includes three complementary components, both at regional and national level:

  • Support in the identification and prioritization of a pipeline of projects;
  • Support in the establishment of a legal and institutional framework;
  • Support the identification and mobilization of long-term funding.

World Bank Group and AFD are leading different aspects of the regional work with some areas of close collaboration.  At the regional level, PPIAF will work alongside the World Bank and AFD in developing the capacity and operational effectiveness of the UEMOA Regional PPP Unit (Unite chargée du développement des projets en PPP dans l’UEMOA) which has been set up at the The Banque Ouest Africaine de Développement (BOAD) and is helping to develop regional projects.  AFD provided a secondee to the UEMOA to assist in the legal drafting of a regional directive and the drafting of a PPP Strategy for UEMOA. AFD is also funding a Business Advisor to support the newly formed PPP Unit within BOAD .

At the country level PPIAF will work with the World Bank Group and AFD in developing the individual PPP programs of the UEMOA member states and help create the necessary interfaces with the Regional PPP Unit. So far PPIAF has approved three country specific activities as part of this program:

  • Support for PPP Framework Design and Project Pipeline Development in Mali
  • PPP Institutional Building and Pipeline Development in Senegal (Phase I)
  • PPP program support in Togo.

This is a partnership program and needs a structure conductive to  working in close collaboration among different organizations. To help in this process a steering committee to oversee the program consisting of representatives from PPIAF, donor representatives, The World Bank Group, French entities, and the UEMOA Commission is being organized. The committee would meet semi-annually to discuss implementation progress and manage interfaces with member states and regional bodies.  An inception meeting of this committee has already taken place. More information on this program and the related activities will be made on the PPIAF website as progress is being made.