The project comprised: (i) Development of a Regional Infrastructure Masterplan and Financing Strategy; meant to define priority regional cross-border projects in energy, trans-boundary water, transport, and ICT including trade and transport facilitation interventions along the IGAD’s main transport corridors to reduce the cost of doing business, reduce transaction costs and enhance competitiveness, complete with a financing strategy and plan for the identified projects to increase the stock of bankable infrastructure projects; and (ii) Project Management and Capacity Building; meant to foster positive economic governance and the creation of an enabling environment for development of viable and sustainable regional infrastructure projects including building capacity of the IGAD Secretariat by providing technical assistance support to establish a focused and targeted Project Management Unit (PMU) to ensure effective coordination, oversight and implementation of the IRIMP study as well as support to IGAD RMCs to review and build consensus around the contents and implementation strategy of the masterplan.

The project was identified as a deliverable In the IGAD Minimum Integration Plan/Roadmap as part of the Road Map towards Creating a Free Trade Area (FTA) in the IGAD Region approved by the member states and the wider Horn of Africa Initiative (HOIA).

All the studies under the project were successfully completed although the implementation faced challenges: (i) the procurement of consulting services took 15 months longer than expected from the signing of the Letter of Agreement (LOA) in May 2017 for the consultant to commence work in August 2018 for a period of 16 months being January 2020; (ii) Data acquisition challenges from various IGAD member states took longer than anticipated; and (iii) Follow-up field work required more time, both of which prompted the consultant to request extension of the contract period which went into the COVID-19 pandemic period that resulted in lockdowns and suspension of gatherings. Delayed disbursements and effects on delivery of outputs within the agreed time schedule and further contributed to late completion of the project.

Note: An extract from the project completion report released by the African Development Bank on 11 August 2022.