Leveraging Partnerships to Drive Innovative Investment in Fragile and Conflict Affected Environments

Presented by IFC.

Fostering a vibrant private sector is critical to ensure economic growth, job creation and the delivery of meaningful impact. FCS countries need the additionality that DFIs provide to help drive economic recovery, develop the private sector, generate jobs and build back better from external shocks. However, investing in these markets is not ‘business as usual; challenges include governance and business integrity issues, small ticket sizes and a lack of investable companies. DFIs have tried to originate investments in fragile markets, with mixed results and considerable reputational risk. Often they end up competing with each other for the same deal given the limitation on deal opportunities and historically there has been little sharing of opportunities, market intelligence or approach. In addition, many fragile countries do not benefit from DFI focus because of their smaller geographical or economic size compared to larger countries where regional offices tend to be located.

Lessons learned from IFC’s CASA initiative demonstrates that innovative and collaborative approaches are essential to driving real change and that partnerships, collective effort and information sharing is critical. We cannot mitigate or reduce fragility if we work in silos. Sharing operational knowledge, mainstreaming conflict and gender sensitivity, systematizing responsible investment and promoting context-specific interventions is at the heart of impactful private sector developments in some of the world’s most challenging markets.

This session aims to discuss how DFIs have created the Africa Resilience Investment Accelerator (ARIA), a new collaborative platform that facilitates proactive intra-DFI engagement in FCS markets to improve investment-readiness and drive sustainable and inclusive economic growth. ARIA’s members include the majority of the DFIs of G7 nations, as well as key multilaterals such as IFC, AFDB and EIB.

The DFI representatives on the panel will explore different opportunities for collaboration including: developing a network, sharing intelligence and forging policymaking insights for member DFIs in these markets; co-originating and developing pipeline opportunities in accordance with individual DFI mandates; developing country pilots and establishing and maintaining common standards of responsible investment.

The panel includes:
Colin Buckley, Colin Buckley, Managing Director and General Counsel, CDC Group
Djalal Khimdjee, Deputy CEO, Proparco
El-Hadj Bah, Chief Policy Economist, AfDB
Sérgio Pimenta, Vice President, Africa, IFC
Femi Oke, Moderator