The International High-Level Panel on Water Investments for Africa has called for Institutional Investor–Public Partnerships (IIPPs) to mobilize an additional $30 billion per year toward bankable and investable water security and sustainable sanitation investment opportunities across Africa.
IIPPs are innovative infrastructure investment partnerships between a government and investors, which seek to mobilize and deploy private capital in respect of climate-focused infrastructure investment programs and projects to deliver a country’s NDC and SDG commitments.
The International High-Level Panel on Water Investments for Africa urged African governments to unlock and scale an unprecedented pipeline of investable water projects by forging closer institutional investor-public partnerships and greater risk-sharing between public and private finance.
According to the panel, pursuing IIPPs is both a continental and global imperative that offers significant investment opportunities for African and global institutional investors with long-term patient capital. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) and concessional finance have a crucial role to play in de-risking these investments to crowd-in global pools of private capital at scale. To attract this private institutional capital, public and private investors must pursue legal and regulatory frameworks supported by the recognition of water and wastewater as investable asset classes.
“Africa’s water investment needs can be solved today, with private capital playing an important role, as it does in many other parts of the world,” said Matt Diserio, president of Water Asset Management. “We welcome the High-Level Panel’s call for more institutional investor–public partnerships, and the recognition of water as an investable asset class.”
Hubert Danso, chairman of the African Union’s Continental Business Network (CBN) and member of the High-Level Panel’s Advisory Group, said the current multitrillion-dollar water infrastructure investment gap calls for the biggest IIPPs between African governments and institutional investors, representing more than $200 trillion of capital globally.
Recently, several African groups joined with industry partners to launch a hub for IIPPs. The hub is an online portal on IIPPs, which will allow governments, investors and stakeholders to assist in building viable IIPPs and make global infrastructure investment allocations at scale, particularly for green infrastructure projects across Africa in emerging markets and developing countries
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