WAPPP’s 2026 global theme on National Infrastructure Financing Institutions (NIFIs) has now completed four of its six planned webinars. The series has progressed from institutional rationale through design, instrument deployment and, most recently, sectoral application in affordable housing.
The launch webinar examined why annual budget cycles, fragmented project-by-project financing, and over-reliance on sovereign and multilateral balance sheets have constrained infrastructure delivery. Mark Moseley (Moseley Infrastructure Advisory Services), Jyoti Bisbey (WAPPP Executive Committee) and Sergei Samolis (PPP Expertise Eurasia) joined WAPPP President Ziad-Alexandre Hayek in this discussion. The discussion pointed to these as structural, not transactional constraints, and underscored the need for permanent institutions to mobilise long-term capital at scale. This diagnosis was set out in Policy Brief 01.
Webinar 2 featured Dr Carter Casady (Stanford University), Seçil Yıldız (Development and Investment Bank of Türkiye), Dr Andre Permana (PT PII, Indonesia) and William Streeter (Independent infrastructure advisor). It examined the trade-offs between development-bank, fund-based and hybrid institutional models. Panellists highlighted that institutional form alone does not determine effectiveness: governance discipline, mandate clarity, operational independence across political cycles and credible capitalisation structures are what ultimately earn investor confidence. The session’s findings are set out in Policy Brief 02.
The third webinar addressed how NIFIs deploy instruments — debt, guarantees, equity, subordinated capital and blended finance — to close the bankability gap and crowd in private capital. Panellists Sanjeev Gupta (Chairman, InfraCredit and former senior executive at the Africa Finance Corporation), Saurabh Suneja (NIIF, India) and Seçil Yıldız discussed instrument design and market discipline. The discussion showed that instrument choice should be matched to the specific constraint limiting a market — credit risk, tenor, or market confidence — rather than applied as a standard product, and that well-structured credit enhancement can mobilise domestic institutional capital, with panellists reporting that crowding-out had not materialised in their own operations. Policy Brief 03 unpacks this in greater detail.
Webinar 4 applied the series’ framework to affordable housing. Kecia Rust (Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa), Dr Hakan Akbulut (Housing Development Administration of Türkiye, TOKİ) and Shri Nagaraj (HUDCO, India) discussed long-term capital mobilisation, land and viability gap instruments, and institutional consolidation. It was clear from the session that to deliver affordable housing at scale, institutions connecting finance to land, project preparation and long-term asset management are critical. The discussion also pointed to the need for more work to explore greater use of PPP models by National Infrastructure Financing Institutions in the financing and delivery of affordable housing. A full view of this is available in Policy Brief 04.
The next webinar in the series turns to local participation. It will examine why financing instruments designed specifically to bring SMEs and domestic enterprises into NIFI-financed pipelines remain rare, and what conditions would be required to design them deliberately. The session will explore local content, aggregation and risk-sharing mechanisms suited to smaller-scale contractors and developers.
The sixth and final webinar will examine how NIFIs, PPP units and development finance institutions coordinate to move PPP transactions from origination to financial close. The session will look at mandate delineation between these institutions, pipeline visibility and co-financing arrangements, and the institutional preconditions required for a NIFI to meaningfully strengthen PPP delivery.
Recordings of all webinars are available through WAPPP’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@SecretariatWAPPP.
Peter Kabuki
2026 Global Theme Program Director