What the Alumni have to say about the AIFP: throwback on Teopolina Namandje’s experience

Already four years since the first edition of the Africa Infrastructure Fellowship Program! Time for us to show you what our alumni are up to: let’s look back at the experience of Teopolina Namandje, fellow of the 2021 edition. 

According to Teopolina, the AIFP was above all an opportunity to share experiences and network over the long term. When she joined the program, she was senior transport economist and PPP liaison officer for the Windhoek Roads Authority in Namibia. Now, she works as a development finance practitioner for the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone: “I am working for the Government of Sierra Leone as an Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Fellow. I work as a Development Finance Practitioner in the Health Financing Unit of the Ministry of Health. I support the ministry on policy reforms as well as providing technical assistance in the implementation of health financing programs. The ministry is currently developing the health PPP Policy to achieving its goals of improving healthcare and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and I’m currently working with the team that is implementing that.” 

For her, the AIFP has been a “unique opportunity in the context of infrastructure financing”. “It’s something that is hardly available, especially now in Africa. It’s an opportunity to really understand the areas around infrastructure financing, and as being in Paris, meeting different stakeholders from the private sector and being with other fellows who are involved in different projects and home countries. It was really an amazing opportunity for me to learn what PPP or infrastructure financing looks like in other countries”, she says. 

In her view, this sharing of experience is essential to promote better implementation of PPP projects on the continent. She explains that she is in contact with other Fellows for long-lasting mutual support: “If I need help, because we were so diverse and from different sector, I can always reach out for them. For example, I reached out for one of the fellows who works for the PPP unit in Ethiopia. When I was in Namibia, I really wanted to understand how their PPP organizations work. I also wanted to see how to link or create, collaborate with different organizations in the name of a PPP unit.”