The Independent Development Evaluation department (IDEV) of the African Development Bank Group launched an independent evaluation of the Bank's utilization of its Public Private Partnership (PPP) mechanism for the 2006-2015 period. The initial phase of the evaluation resulted in the presentation of a stocktaking report on the Bank's utilization of its PPP mechanism between 2006 and 2014 to the Board of Directors' Committee on Operations and Development Effectiveness (CODE)1. The Stocktaking Report recommended that a follow-up independent evaluation consisting of a retrospective component and a prospective component of the Bank's utilization of its PPP mechanism is conducted.
The purpose of the PPP evaluation is to inform future PPP strategic framework and operational plans utilizing PPP mechanism as a Bank's strategic response to the infrastructure gap on the continent and increase the potential of scaling-up PPP interventions towards achieving the Bank corporate goals encapsulated in the "High Fives", the Ten Year Strategy (TYS), as well as the Private Sector Development Policy and Strategy2.
The objectives of the inception phase launched in August 2016 are four-fold: i) assessing the available background information; ii) identifying and assessing the quality of available data; iii) identifying information gaps; and iv) finalizing a suitable methodology for the evaluation.
In this context, a scoping mission which included a visit to the AfDB's Headquarters in Abidjan took place from October 10th to 21st, 2016. The mission allowed multiple in-depth discussions with Task Managers within the department in charge of private sector operations (OPSD) and other relevant stakeholders within the Bank.
The present inception report summarizes the review of the relevant documentation and data, as well as the results of interviews with the main stakeholders involved in the preparation an implementation of PPP operations at the Bank. The report also specifies the proposed approach to operationalize the evaluation. In this perspective, after the introductory section above, the report includes definitions and concepts related to PPP projects. The third section describes the rationale, purpose, scope and expected outcomes of the evaluation, and the fourth section presents the contextual analysis of the PPPs, findings, recommendations and lessons learned from previous Bank's work. The fifth section presents an overview of the Bank's PPP interventions between 2006 and 2016, including the strategic context of the Bank's PPP interventions as well as the Bank's PPP Portfolio. The sixth section deals with the Evaluation conceptual model and methodology. The seventh section highlights the key Evaluation activities and the work plan for the evaluation.
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1 Bank Group Utilization of the Public-Private Partnership Mechanism (2006-2014) -Stock taking Report- ADB/BD/IF/2016/01 ADF/BD/IF/2016/01- January 2016
2 Private Sector Development Strategy 2013-2017 ("Supporting the Transformation of the Private Sector in Africa"), 2013