Second African PPP Units Forum opens in Africa Hall to tackle social sector service delivery

Africa Hall, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 29 September 2026 (ECA) - The Second Forum for Private-Public Partnership (PPP) Units in Africa opened here today under the theme “Making Social Sector PPPs Work: From Policy Ambition to Effective Service Delivery.” The two-day, hybrid forum is co-organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) and brings together PPP units from across the continent. It builds on an inaugural forum held in 2024, which convened over 30 PPP units around climate resilient infrastructure and set the stage for this edition's focus on social sectors. The forum responds to a persistent implementation gap: infrastructure PPPs remain central to Africa's development agenda, but progress on the ground has lagged behind policy ambition, held back by limited project preparation capacity, affordability pressures and institutional and technical gaps. Social sector PPPs, in housing, healthcare, education, sanitation and energy, pose a distinct challenge. Unlike economically focused projects, they rarely generate enough user fee revenue to stand on their own, relying in...