15 July 2014 - OECD ‌Conference Centre, Paris, France

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, AfDB President Donald Kaberuka and Professor Paul Collier were amongst distinguished participants taking part in this seminar. 

Discussions related to fostering private investment in Africa’s infrastructure have multiplied in recent years. There is widespread recognition that the continent’s infrastructure gap is growing, and that African governments cannot afford to bridge this gap through tax revenues and aid alone. But, although investment opportunities are plentiful, investors are not yet fully seizing them.

In this context, and drawing on experiences from a range of developing countries, this seminar investigated how changes made in policy areas at national, regional and international levels can help generate more and better private investment in Africa’s infrastructure. Particular attention was devoted to three areas of public policy:

• Better regulation in both home and host countries, to unlock the supply of finance for infrastructure projects

• A proactive approach to managing risks across the project cycle

• Using public risk-bearing capital more effectively to leverage private investment in infrastructure

Jointly organised with the African Development Bank and the International Growth Centre, this event brought together institutional investors, representatives of host governments (including PPP practitioners), infrastructure utility companies, regional organisations, the international banking sector, and bilateral and multilateral development finance institutions.

This seminar follows on from the Roundtable on Stimulating Private Investment in Infrastructure in Africa and South Asia, hosted by the International Growth Centre in February 2014, where participants sought to clarify the spectrum of risks and the systemic organisational failures that are hampering greater investment flows into these regions’ infrastructure.
  

View photos from the seminar on SlideShare

MEETING DOCUMENTS

Summary report

Agenda

Issues note

Participant biographies
 
Stimulating private investment in Africa and Southeast Asia, Keith Palmer
 
Infrastructure in Africa: A new agenda, Paul Collier and Colin Mayer

Private investment in infrastructure, International Growth Centre

LINKS

OECD work on investment in Africa

OECD work on institutional investors and long-term-investment

African Development Bank

International Growth Centre

CONTACT

For more information please email [email protected].