Communications and Stakeholder Engagement
Communications and stakeholder engagement are key to platform success, shaping platform relationship and credibility with domestic actors, international partners, and local communities. Strong communication and transparency can help support the necessary political and social conditions for delivery, particularly when working alongside complementary programs already delivering in-country.
Similarly, stakeholder engagement is integral to informing platform design and cultivating the breadth of ownership and consensus needed to make politically challenging choices sustainable. Within government, continued engagement with line ministries, utilities, regulators, and state-owned enterprises are all important to facilitate implementation. Outside government, local communities, domestic civil society, development partners and the private sector are important actors that can help inform the design of a country platform, and add credibility to its mandate.
A platform's public-facing presence is also important. A well-developed website can serve a broad and diverse set of audiences, while providing clear and current information on the platform’s structure, targets, engagement opportunities, pipeline developments, and progress. Platforms that maintain regular, public updates are well-positioned to maintain investor confidence and manage partner expectations.
Private sector engagement should be carefully sequenced: structured dialogues with financiers at the design stage are critical to informing the scope of a platform, and identifying financing vehicles that are both impactful and achievable. A market sounding exercise can assess market appetite for finance-ready projects and improve transparency by consolidating and sharing feedback from financiers. This can provide stakeholders a clearer view of where private financiers are willing and able to participate and where public capital may be needed to unlock investment. Such a process encourages public financiers to make space for private capital in commercially-viable projects and to collaborate more effectively where concessional or public financing is needed.
