Infrastructure Project Support

Training skilled engineers in the water sector will mean that infrastructure built today will remain in Southern Africa for many years to come.

Focus on long-term solutions

Capacity development

Small-scale and emergency responses to water crises are needed to save lives. However, the next step must be the provision of long-term solutions to improve people’s livelihoods and living standards and to help the poor cope with the effects of climate change. Putting these long-term solutions in place requires capacity building within the institutions who plan, finance and develop infrastructure. It is this kind of integrated approach (which will eventually remove the need for development aid) that CRIDF is focused on.

Our work with stakeholders seeks to develop a clear understanding of partners’ capacity needs using tools such as political economy analyses and investment climate analyses (which show constraints that prevent access to finance). Based on the results of such studies, CRIDF includes appropriate capacity-development responses in the support packages it develops for specific projects.

Championing and spreading solutions

The Facility also works to identify champions with whom CRIDF can work closely in order to build their capacity to implement selected projects using CRIDF-designed implementing tools and approaches. The Facility will also support those champions so that they encourage the use of such approaches in other non-CRIDF climate-resilient water infrastructure projects. Collaboration with government ministries and other actors at the regional level, coupled with the replication of those systems at the project level, will extend the use of those systems from country to country across the region.

Rapid Advisory Service

CRIDF also provides a Rapid Advisory Service to provide ‘on demand’ technical assistance in relevant areas. Requests are reviewed using a fast-track screening process so that eligible requests can be quickly actioned.