Capacity Building: A Prerequisite for Responsible Use of PPPs in Africa
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are playing an increasingly important role in the development strategies of African countries, particularly in meeting critical needs for infrastructure and public services. But one thing is now clear across the entire continent: the success of these complex arrangements does not depend solely on the capital raised or the quality of the legal frameworks. It depends first and foremost on the capacity of government agencies to identify, structure, negotiate, and manage these projects over the long term.
It is precisely this challenge that is addressed by public capacity building, now recognized as a strategic lever in its own right for investment policies.
A Capacity-Building Workshop for Togolese Government Agencies
It is in this context that the capacity-building workshop led by Julie Claude, partner and co-head of Fidal Africa, will take place from 13 to 15 April 2026, in Lomé (Togo), as part of the Support Project for the Promotion of Investments and the Development of PPPs (PAPIDPPP), at the initiative of the Ministry of Investment Promotion and Economic Sovereignty.
Designed for Togolese government agencies involved in investment policy, this workshop aims to strengthen their skills throughout the entire PPP project lifecycle: project identification; preliminary legal, land-use and financial audits and evaluations; legal and financial structuring; negotiation techniques; contractual implementation and performance monitoring.
Through practical case studies, negotiation simulations, and lessons learned from real-world operations across the continent, the training aims to equip participants with directly applicable tools within a secure, transparent framework that complies with international standards.
Expertise Forged in the Field, Across Francophone Africa
Julie Claude has over twenty years of experience in business law in Africa. As head of Fidal Africa, whose regional hub is based in Casablanca and which operates in several Francophone African countries, she advises both public sector entities and private investors on high-stake strategic transactions.
Her expertise covers the full spectrum of infrastructure projects and public-private partnerships: structuring and negotiating PPP contracts; developing standardized contractual templates deployed across multiple African jurisdictions – particularly in the areas of energy efficiency, agreements for the use and development of public property; and advising international infrastructure funds on their projects across the continent.
Her practice is also underpinned by her in-depth experience in audits: legal and land-use audits of infrastructure projects prior to contract signing, compliance audits of contractual arrangements, and legal audits of multi-jurisdictional groups conducted in several French-speaking African countries with the support of a proven network of local correspondents. This expertise in auditing – a step that is too often overlooked, although it determines the legal soundness and bankability of projects – is one of the distinctive features of the training provided to government agencies.
This practice, regularly recognized by the sector’s leading ranking bodies, directly informs the training programs she provides to public institutions: the courses taught in Lomé are based on real-world scenarios encountered during the negotiation and execution of actual projects.
Capacity Building: A Long-Term Investment
By mobilizing private financing, optimizing risk allocation, and accelerating the implementation of public interest projects, PPPs are a vital tool for economic growth and infrastructure development in Africa. But a contract, no matter how well drafted, is only as valuable as the parties’ ability to negotiate it on equal terms and to ensure its successful implementation throughout its entire term – often twenty to thirty years.
Strengthening the capacity of government agencies thus produces effects that extend far beyond the scope of any given project: it rebalances the relationship between public and private partners, reassures investors through the quality of their institutional counterparts, and sustainably enhances the attractiveness of nations. Initiatives such as PAPIDPPP play a decisive role in this regard.
Through this mission, Fidal Africa reaffirms its long-term commitment to working alongside African institutions: to contribute not only to the success of transformative projects, but also – and above all – to building the capacity of the government agencies that lead them, in support of economic development and national sovereignty.
