Nineteen infrastructure practitioners from 19 African governments have been selected for the 2026 Africa Infrastructure Fellowship Program (AIFP), the program announced.
This initiative is a key capacity-building effort to train public officials to address the continent’s infrastructure investment gap, which the African Development Bank estimates at $130 to $170 billion annually.
The fellows, drawn from Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritania, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, the Gambia, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, will spend an intensive period in Paris working with academic experts, private sector practitioners, and development bank infrastructure teams emerging with hands-on understanding of public-private partnerships, procurement, governance, and project financing that few government training programmes on the continent can match.
This year’s cohort: Charles Salé (Cameroon), Yoba Okaingni (Côte d’Ivoire), Carmel Lulihi (DRC), Abebe Korcho (Ethiopia), Elgiva Donkor (Ghana), Lesley Rugumi (Kenya), Tefo Rabolinyane (Lesotho), Emily Kwatani (Malawi), Cheikh Abdy (Mauritania), Monika Sakaria (Namibia), Teslim Abass (Nigeria), Christian Labare (Senegal), Ousmane Goudiaby (Senegal), Tyrin Naidoo (South Africa), Matarr Sambou (Gambia), Lamia Kthiri (Tunisia), Doreen Turyabasingura (Uganda), Pauline Chande (Zambia), and Farai Mangwende (Zimbabwe).
The programme, launched at Davos in 2018 by the Global Infrastructure Hub, Meridiam and the World Economic Forum, targets a structural gap that has constrained African development for decades: governments with genuine infrastructure ambitions but without the technical capacity to structure, procure, and manage complex public-private partnerships at the standard global capital markets require.
Since the first cohort convened in 2020, more than 70 professionals from over 30 African countries have completed the programme, engineers, lawyers and finance officials who return to their governments equipped to negotiate infrastructure deals on more equal footing with international investors and contractors.
The 2026 cohort is backed by Meridiam, the World Bank Group, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, FAST-Infra Group, Hogan Lovells and Standard Bank Group.
This is a coalition spanning development finance, legal advisory and commercial banking that reflects the programme’s core premise to close Africa’s infrastructure gap requires public and private capital speaking the same technical language.
Fellows will study infrastructure prioritisation frameworks, PPP selection and contract management, risk allocation and project preparation, with the opportunity to sit the APMG Public-Private Partnerships Certification, an internationally recognised qualification administered with the World Bank.
Each fellow also completes a placement inside a development bank, investment firm or private infrastructure company, translating classroom theory into operational experience before returning home.
For the 19 African governments represented in this cohort, the return on investment is not abstract.
Every fellow who masters PPP structuring, risk allocation and infrastructure financing returns to a finance ministry, public works department, or transport authority better equipped to bring bankable projects to market, projects that create jobs, unlock private capital and build the roads, power plants, and water systems the continent’s growing population urgently needs.
Africa’s infrastructure deficit will not close through capital alone. It requires people who know how to deploy it. Twenty more of them just landed in Paris.
