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In Benin, local authorities struggle to attract investors and businesses, which limits economic opportunities and local employment. The majority of communal investments depend on funding from the State and technical and financial partners. Despite the existence of a legal framework for public-private partnerships (PPPs), local authorities are not fully exploiting private-sector opportunities.
To remedy this, the Citizen Participation in Public Policies for Local Economic Development (PartiCiP au DEL) project consortium (financed by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Benin) and the ReForme project (financed by GIZ Benin) organized the Private Investments in Municipalities’ Fair (Salon des Investissements privés dans les Communes, SIC 2024) in Cotonou on September 12 and 13, to help communes better "sell" the potential and resources of their terroirs, and connect them to financial partners.
The fair’s objective was to promote communal investments for the development of the local economy by highlighting promising projects and business opportunities, i.e. :
- facilitate exchanges between local authorities, entrepreneurs, financing structures and investors, with a view to fostering partnerships and investment opportunities.
- create a meeting place conducive to the establishment of strategic partnerships between public and private players, to offer participants a business and networking framework for technical, financial and/or commercial partnership agreements
Of the 200+ participants at the fair, public administration executives from sectoral ministries, such as the Minister of Decentralization and Director of Territorial Collectivities ; municipal actors, in the persons of the Mayors and Executive Secretaries of the 13 participating municipalities ; private sector representatives (including banks, 26 CEOs of SMEs) and the diplomatic corps were in attendance.
Key highlights of the event were:
- the presentation of the main results of the PartiCiP au DEL project, including 10 tools developed to help stakeholders take ownership of LED; 37 initiatives to promote local economic potential in municipal planning documents; development of LED-based Participatory Budgets...
- 2 multi-stakeholder panels, on "Territorial attractiveness and PPP practices" and "Stepping up financing for SMEs/SMIs", clarifying the legal framework for PPPs and highlighting the products and services offered by banks and other structures to promote the local economy.
- the marketing of local territories by municipalities, in the form of a presentation of the economic assets of their areas, leading to B2B sessions on promising projects such as palm oil production and the initiatives of certain municipalities.
Upon the closing of the 2-day event, organizers and participants alike agreed on the following important next steps and actions to be taken going forward:
- Create a permanent framework for exchange between municipalities and investors to stimulate fund-raising for PPP projects.
- Publicize and facilitate access to financing products tailored to local authorities and SMEs,
- Genuinely build the capacities of municipal actors and local authorities to ensure that they fully understand the PPP legal framework and are able to put together project financing applications at local level.
