Enhancing the financial position of cities: Evidence from Dakar

The city of Dakar in Senegal is one of the only cities in Africa to come close to taking a municipal bond to market. The US$40 million bond, set to launch in 2014, was designed to fund a new market hall for informal traders in the city. The market would relocate more than 4,000 street vendors, with the aim of moving them from side streets into a safe and central place to sell their goods, with access to credit agencies and other market services. Development partners, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank’s Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), Cities Alliance, and USAID, played a crucial role in making the bond terms viable – both in shouldering the financial burden of developing internal creditworthiness, and in providing expertise and guarantees to reduce the risk.

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This case study is also available in French.