Africa

Insecure dwellings in communities with high crime rates and few security patrols can exacerbate women’s vulnerability to burglary, theft and rape in their own homes. Recent migrants are often particularly vulnerable to attacks from strangers and are less able to seek protection from neighbours.

Creating safe and inclusive environments is a top priority for UK government, who have signed up to several international commitments in this area, including Sustainable Development Goal 11 to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’, with a target that directly contributes to addressing women and girls’ safety in public spaces.

Despite the large demand for financial services among people with low income, perceived risks associated with unstable earnings, lack of credit history and limited collateral deter business innovation in this sector. The World Bank states that 2 billion people do not use formal financial services and more than 50 percent of adults in the lowest-income […]

Whilst digital solutions on their own cannot provide a silver bullet to youth unemployment, when viewed as part of a suite of approaches to tackling this issue, digital-focused interventions also have great potential to support the development of a vibrant, valuable youth workforce. Such interventions should be complemented by support in areas such as education […]

Research highlights the provision of affordable housing, including for the lowest income groups, as an overlooked opportunity for developers and investors willing to think more creatively about the housing market. There are a number of areas where collaboration between private and community sector organisations could enable development of affordable housing, utilising the networks and resources established […]

Investors developing private solar projects in Africa have been deterred from entering the market by obstacles such as high transaction costs, heavily negotiated agreements, high risk and the cost of capital. The IFC Scaling Solar Programme was initiated to de-risk the bidding process and to enable project developers to compete on a “like-for-like” basis. The […]

Nigeria’s power sector value chain suffered from debilitating obstacles such as chronic underinvestment, system inefficiencies, poor planning and skill gaps. The Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (NIAF), a demand-driven technical assistance programme, supported the Federal Government of Nigeria to address these infrastructure bottlenecks, freeing up non-oil growth in the wider economy.

Despite being the largest economy in Africa, Nigeria is severely constrained by low quality, decaying infrastructure and inadequate power supply. Responding to these constraints DFID established the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (NIAF), a demand driven technical assistance programme to support more Phase 1 ran from November 2007 to November 2011 (£32.6 million). NIAF II continued […]

This case study describes an innovative solar infrastructure investment facilitation platform developed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and launched in Zambia in January 2015 with the aim to be replicated in other African countries.

Traditionally, donor programmes have been established using a simple formula, whereby SPs estimate the total overhead for a programme through tender, against a fixed set of inputs and workplan. In these programmes, clients need to wait months or years before assistance is deployed due to procurement procedures, by which time resource allocation, costs, and plans […]