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About Us

PPIAF's mission is to help eliminate poverty and
achieve sustainable development by facilitating private investment in infrastructure.

Despite progress achieved in expanding infrastructure services in developing countries, millions of people still lack access to water, sanitation, and electricity. Governments face major challenges in ensuring efficient service provision, especially for the poorest segments of the population.

To reach the targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals, investment must increase dramatically. But the public sector, which currently provides about 70% of infrastructure investment, cannot do it alone.

Private companies can play a key role in providing new and improved services. Developing efficient public-private partnerships that take advantage of the strengths of both the private and public sectors is an important part of the solution.

A key constraint for improved service provision in many developing countries is the lack of an enabling environment conducive to private investment, including the necessary policies, laws, regulations, institutions, and government capacity. Consequently, the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) was created to address this issue.

Learn more about PPIAF

What is PPIAF?
The Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) was created in 1999 to act as a catalyst to increase private sector participation in emerging markets. It provides technical assistance to governments to support the creation of a sound enabling environment for the provision of basic infrastructure services by the private sector.
 
A sound business enabling environment consists of strong institutions, legal systems and rule of law, high standards of public and corporate governance, transparency, competition, protection of investments, enforcement of laws, and dispute resolution mechanisms.
 
Governments are the main generators of private sector projects, but there are obstacles that impede private sector participation. PPIAF can assist to remove some of these obstacles by supporting: 
  • Policy formulation, as public authorities decide between public and private provision of infrastructure services
  • The selection of the best mode of delivery of infrastructure services and the risk allocation between the public and the private sectors
  • Building capacity in public authorities to design public-private partnership projects, manage the award process and the service delivery, and partner with private investors
  • Adequate consultation with beneficiaries to share project objectives
  • Legislation and institutional reforms to ensure the sustainability of the investments and the protection of property and contractual rights
  • Support for the negotiations of contracts to ensure adequate risk allocation between public and private parties 


PPIAF is a multi-donor technical assistance facility, financed by 17 multilateral and bilateral donors: Asian Development Bank, Australia, Austria, Canada, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, France, Germany, International Finance Corporation, Italy, Japan, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and the World Bank. PPIAF funds are untied and grants are provided on a demand-driven basis.

PPIAF is governed by a Program Council composed of its donors. An independent technical advisory panel reviews PPIAF activities and provides strategic advice to the Program Council. The Project Management Unit (PMU) manages day-to-day operations. To facilitate outreach and monitoring of its technical assistance activities, the PMU maintains field offices in Nairobi and Dubai.
 

What type of technical assistance does PPIAF provide?
PPIAF provides grants to help governments create a sound enabling environment for private participation in infrastructure through different types of activities, such as:

  • Framing infrastructure development strategies
  • Designing and implementing policy, regulatory, and institutional reforms
  • Organizing stakeholder consultation workshops
  • Building government institutional capacity
  • Designing and implementing pioneering projects 
PPIAF also produces and disseminates knowledge and best practices on private participation in infrastructure.

For more information on PPIAF's role in mobilizing private and public investment in infrastructure, click here to see a presentation which is also availalbe in French and Portuguese.
 
What are PPIAF's areas of focus?
To better target its technical assistance, PPIAF developed a work program structured around three strategic pillars (universal access, climate change, and urbanization) and four cross-cutting themes (sub-national technical assistance, fragile states, regional integration, and capacity building).
 
These strategic pillars logically group several key development priorities identified by PPIAF’s donors, reflect the “special themes” identified for IDA 16, and organize by themes the technical assistance that has been provided by PPIAF to date and its priorities for future work. Click here to see a summary of the work program.
 

Which countries and sectors are eligible?
Eligible countries include recipients of official development assistance as defined by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD (for a list of countries visit the OECD website). Two-thirds of PPIAF’s support goes to low-income countries and half of PPIAF support goes to Africa. Requests from low-income countries will receive special consideration.

Eligible sectors include water and sanitation, solid waste management, telecommunications, transport, energy, and irrigation. Priority is given to activities that support strategies designed to expand access to infrastructure for poor people at affordable prices.

Click here to learn more about what PPIAF does and where it works.

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How is PPIAF’s effectiveness assessed?
PPIAF uses output, outcome, and impact indicators to track the performance and effectiveness of its technical assistance activities. Monitoring impact indicators include, among others, additional private investment in a specific sector, increased number of poor people with access to infrastructure services, and improved levels of service for the poor. Every year, the Technical Advisory Panel conducts ex-post reviews of a selected number of activities to ensure they are correctly designed and implemented.

Since its inception, PPIAF has gone through several in-depth evaluations by external consulting firms, selected by the Program Council, to assess the program’s continued relevance; the appropriateness of its governance structure and operation management; and the impact of its activities in assisting developing countries to improve infrastructure and reduce poverty. These evaluations confirmed PPIAF’s value-added role to develop capacity in infrastructure.

To learn more, visit Monitoring & Evaluation.
 


How to apply for PPIAF support
Please contact one of the PPIAF Regional Coordinators with an activity concept. Click here for more information on how to apply for funds.