This three-day CABRI dialogue on financing and managing infrastructure projects brought together senior officials from the budget offices and ministries of infrastructure of Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritius, Senegal, Mozambique, South Africa, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The dialogue was held in Pretoria from 7 to 9 December 2009. The objective of the dialogue was for senior officials to find better ways to plan and evaluate public investments, to discuss alternative ways for governments to finance these projects, and to establish ways in which to manage expenditure on these projects during implementation for value for money.

The dialogue was articulated around six case studies that investigated key decision points in large infrastructure projects:

• A waste water public-private partnership in Egypt
• A hospital public-private partnership in Lesotho
• The Maputo port concession in Mozambique
• A hydro plan in Sierra Leone
• An urban sanitation project in Guinea
• The Songa gas project in Tanzania
The dialogue used case studies as learning tools to apply the approaches, concepts, frameworks and tools presented in the main papers to real-life situations. Participants analysed these case studies and came up with recommendations with regard to a course of action to resolve the problem presented.
Those case studies were supported by keynote papers with particular focus on the following areas:

• The pre-contracting phase, with a focus on appraisal
• The financing of infrastructure projects, with a focus on the use of public-private partnerships
• Managing the implementation of projects from government’s side through monitoring and review