WACDEP

Public funds, supported by traditional development finance, are no longer sufficient to develop infrastructure in the required time period, to meet Africa’s demand. The most significant bottleneck facing infrastructure development is the “bankability” gap – the lack of suitably characterised and appropriately packaged projects. The Global Water Partnership (GWP) wanted to find a way to close this gap. They sought to support national and regional institutions in integrating water security and climate resilience in development planning processes, building climate resilience and assisting countries in adapting to a new climate regime through increased investments in water security.

Projects are not developed in a vacuum. We recognized the need to link early project preparation planning with institutional capacity development. For each region and country, we worked with key stakeholders to understand the bottlenecks to national and regional project financing. We then selected a national/regional priority project, developed a financing tool to examine all types of national, regional and international project funding available to the water and climate related project, and supported institutional champions through capacity building initiatives. In each country/region, we then developed project Concept Notes. Of the 20 Concept Notes developed for different funding sources under this work package, nearly €20 million has been leveraged.