Programme Design

This paper explores the four key opportunities that developing country governments and donors must consider if they wish to make their urban areas centres of inclusive and sustained economic growth.

This paper sets out the key challenges that digital solutions could address, provides a skeleton theory of change for how digital solutions can address the challenge of poor urban infrastructure, and then explores the four key opportunities that developing country governments and donors must consider if they wish to make their urban areas centres of […]

DFID’s Economic Development Strategy (2017) recognises climate change as ‘the biggest global threat to sustained economic development’. Climate resilient infrastructure can accommodate the shocks and stresses posed by extreme weather events and climate change, while supporting economies and communities (particularly the poor and vulnerable) to survive, adapt and thrive in the face of these challenges. […]

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 […]

The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) through its Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) offers the Viability Gap Funding (VGF) – an innovative financing instrument designed to offset part of the up-front preparation costs of pro-poor infrastructure investments in challenging environments. TAF provides technical assistance and capacity building to the PIDG facilities to make their projects commercially […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.