The Investment Climate Facility

The Investment Climate Facility (ICF) is a relatively new private-public partnership focused on improving the continent's investment climate. The WEF describes the ICF as "an innovative private-public partnership explicitly focused on making Africa a better place to do business, by removing obstacles

The first group of donor governments and corporate supporters have already committed substantial resources to the ICF. With its governance structures now in place and with the support of the African Union, Nepad and Business Action for Africa, the WEF session will be asking if the ICF can live up to its ambitious promise of being responsive, dynamic and quick disbursing and whether its impact will be measurable?

Firmino Mucavele, Nepad's chief executive, is a strong supporter of the ICF, describing it as "an African-led response to Africa's development challenges ... the ICF will provide powerful support for Nepad's strategy to galvanise the private sector in Africa".

Governed by an independent board responsible to the ICF's investors and to African and other high-level stakeholders, the facility has a clearly defined sevenyear growth plan. For the next two to three years, the second phase of the fundraising will be addressed while operations get underway. The initial target funding was $11 Om, of which a substantial proportion has already been secured from donors and the private sector.

The second funding phase envisages a total of S550m being raised for the entire seven-year programme. Funding is expected from both the private sector and donors in a 1:10 ratio - SSOm from the private sector ($2.5m from 20 corporations over five years), and $500m from donors ($50m from each of 10 donors over five years). Involving the private sector will help ensure that the real and perceived problems experienced by investors are effectively addressed.

The ICF strategy objectives can be broadly defined as building the environment for investment climate reform, especially through supporting dialogue between government and business; getting the investment climate right by supporting governments in their attempts to create the legal, regulatory and administrative regimes that will encourage businesses to invest, grow, create employment and prosper and encouraging businesses in Africa to publicise their progress, so helping to improve Africa's international image.

Stephen Williams