AquaFed launches the 4Ps Initiative
during its New York event

AquaFed launched its initiative to help governments and public authorities to grow the pipeline of bankable and well-designed PPP projects, during a focus on water at the United Nations in New York.

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The federation’s new president, Cyril Courjaret, launched the Initiative at the beginning of our high-level panel on PPPs. He explained that 2026 Conference has inspired us to create the Initiative – to take bolder steps and work even harder to help create partnerships and deliver our solutions.

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The 4Ps (Public-Private-Partnership Process) Initiative ambition is to:

• Gather practitioners from bodies involved in PPP development

• Communicate and support the embedding of best practice

• Connect governments and authorities with experts for general or tailored support.
   

There are two key pillars to the Initiative:

• Global Water PPP Hub – an online portal with water PPP information accessible to everyone

• The 4Ps Network - for governments and public authorities, to get access to trusted experts and tailored support on specific issues.
   

Summary of points made by each of the speakers:

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 Retno Marsudi, UN Special Envoy on Water

• PPPs are a way of helping to meet the financing needs of the global south and to accelerate resilience.

• The AquaFed 4Ps Initiative will help to ensure support for countries considering establishing PPP agreements.

• Priority areas for support are: planning, budgeting and contract negotiations.

 

Mr Saroj Jha, Global Director and Head of Water Global Practice, World Bank

• PPPs are a solution for governments, but they first need to show political will to improve their water systems.

• Willingness to pay for water is quite often not the problem, it is the willingness from politicians to charge. The fundamental problem is not valuing water correctly.

• PPPs are not just about financing, they bring expertise with solutions for specific problems.

• Much greater attention is needed to create Operations and Maintenance (O&M) agreements.

 

H.E Christopher Kirigua, Deputy Chief of Mission & The National Treasury Chief Representative, Government of Kenya

• PPPs are challenging to implement, especially balancing bankability and affordability.

• Blended finance is critical, bringing DFIs who can provide ‘long-term money’ to support the financial viability of the project.

• National long term-planning is essential, but suggested having successive 3-5 year medium term plans as the way to achieve long term continuity.

• Project planning and development is essential and cannot be done in just a couple of weeks.

 

Dr Mohammed Diatta, special adviser at the Ministry of Water and Sanitation, spoke of the PPPs in operation in Senegal

• The importance of capacity building and ensuring all players can deliver the project.

 

Ms Shaima Gargash, Director of Energy & Sustainability at UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• Water PPPs have been established for many years there, but a crucial success factor has been gathering all relevant partners right at the beginning of potential agreements.
   

The discussion was supported by Mathieu De Kervenoael, Partner, Roland Berger, who gave a presentation on current PPP agreements, and David Ehrhardt, Chief Executive, Castalia Consulting who also gave examples of agreements that he has advised on.

 

There were also contributions to the discussion from the audience, including:

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Dolly Mirchandani, Partner, White & Chase

• Different countries have markets at very different levels of maturity so different approaches are needed eg Desalination is much more possible in Australia compared to Senegal.
   

Christopher Gasson, Owner, Global Water Intelligence

• PPP programmes are better than projects.

• Concessions work better than full privatisations.

• Improving utilities matters much more than sourcing the finance.