Resources

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 […]

This case study explores the Viability Gap Funding (VGF) financing instrument provided by the Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) to the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) project development and financing facilities. VGF helps PIDG facilities offset part of the up-front preparation costs of pro-poor private infrastructure investments in challenging environments that prevent projects towards attracting debt […]

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.

The Centre for Inclusive Growth (CIG) was initially set-up as a think-tank to inform economic policy and help tackle Nepal’s growth constraints associated with inadequate infrastructure, flawed macro-economic management and weak policy coherence. It became apparent however that such an approach would not deliver results due to Nepal’s governance constraints. As a result, CIG shifted […]

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 communities and public […]

Violence and the threat of violence holds back economic growth in urban areas, limiting women’s mobility, access to economic opportunities, and the ability to move into higher paid or more secure jobs. This paper looks at how to build gender-transformative safe spaces programmes to improve women and girls’ safety and mobility in urban spaces.

In 2016 ICED undertook an extensive review of best practices found across DFID and other donor programmes which utilise technical assistance to improve investment in, and delivery of infrastructure in developing countries. The review undertook case studies of 10 high performing technical assistance programmes which had achieved significant outcomes in infrastructure delivery, finding a number […]

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 […]

Infrastructure Development Company Ltd. (IDCOL), a government finance institution, has been instrumental in scaling-up electricity access through off-grid solar home systems (SHS) across Bangladesh. This public-private partnership has successfully rolled out approximately 4.1 million SHS since 2003 using innovative financial and technology packages. However the IDCOL’s SHS programme has had to modify its original design […]

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.