On Tuesday 13th May, the CoST – Infrastructure Transparency Initiative – International Secretariat visited Mponera in Malawi to provide technical assistance to CoST Malawi’s Multi-Stakeholder Group to grow their understanding of how to use the CoST tools and standards to drive transparency in public infrastructure investment – with a particular focus on expanding their existing success to climate finance projects.
This year, CoST Malawi – championed by HE Lazarus Chakwera, President of Malawi – published an ambitious annual plan. This plan sets out how nationally they will build upon the success they have had to date in using the CoST approach to improve transparency and accountability in public infrastructure, to include for the first time climate finance objectives and investment.
Malawi joins several other CoST members who are implementing these new data standards around climate finance and sustainable infrastructure to facilitate delivery of quality and resilient infrastructure addressing climate change.
Next week, we are hosting a webinar entitled “From data to impact: climate finance and sustainability standards driving open government” on May 22nd at 13:00 BST during the annual OGP Week where you can find out more about our members’ plans to apply these new standards. Sign up here.
CoST Malawi’s Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG) is convened by The National Construction Industry Council (NCIC) and includes government, private sector and civil society representatives across Malawi. The technical assistance mission began with Multi-Stakeholder Group Chairman, Eng. Samuel Bitoni, setting out the Group’s ambitious targets to scale up and increase visibility for the program in 2025, including engaging more development partners and he shared his confidence that the MSG have the skill set to do this. The Multi-Stakeholder former Chair, Eng. Joe Chingani shared his joy for seeing CoST Malawi continuing to progress after his handover.
CoST Malawi have always been committed to a strong multi-stakeholder approach and this is to credit for much of Malawi’s success to date. This week’s technical assistance mission further demonstrates the Multi-Stakeholder Group’s commitment and drive to continuously strengthen their understanding and the application of CoST tools and standards.
All CoST data standards, tools and resources are available for free for governments and procuring entities who would like to ensure they deliver quality and resilient infrastructure that best serves communities. These standards include a set of new climate finance modules published last year in collaboration with GIZ as well as sustainability modules funded by the World Bank, both with contributions from Open Data Services and Open Contracting Partnership. The CoST International Secretariat also provides technical support to members to help apply the approach in their local context.