Olivier Pognon, Director and CEO of the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF), spoke to Samantha Seewoosurrun in an exclusive interview during a recent visit to Mauritius where he explained how the legal advisory firm, which started out as a small project within the African Development Bank, is now a full-fledged international organisation with 48 African countries as members.
He reflects on the importance of public-private partnerships as a vehicle to undertake critical infrastructure projects, and how new instruments such as carbon credits, debt swaps, debt for nature, and debt for climate are becoming increasingly popular.
He dives deep into the capacity building initiatives undertaken by the ALSF, explains the key sectors where their legal expertise is being demanded across economies, and looks to the future of the ALSF itself as a well-resourced, autonomous institution. He envisions ALSF realising its true potential in terms of maximising its support to African governments in entering the right contracts and structuring debt agreements that reflect their future capacity to pay.
Edited excerpts:
- The ALSF is an international organisation hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Established in 2008, the Facility is dedicated to providing legal advice and technical assistance to African countries in the structuring and negotiation of complex commercial transactions, creditor litigation and other related sovereign transactions. Could you tell us how the motivation for establishing ALSF came about?
ALSF was established back in 2008 as an initiative from the ministers of finance of the African Development Bank. In the 2000s, there were some African countries that were in trouble with vulture fund litigation – funds that would buy debt at a cheap price and then claim it at 10 times the value. So the ministers of finance acknowledged that there was a lack of capacity in the countries to deal with complex litigation, which motivated the African Development Bank to establish an instrument that would help defend against those vulture funds.
That’s how ALSF started out in 2010 as a small project within the African Development Bank. From the very start, the ALSF was set up as an international organisation with its own structure, governance, and project pipeline. From 2010 to date, we’ve grown significantly into a full-fledged international organisation, still hosted by the African Development Bank, and our mandate has been expanded to cover legal advisory services and capacity building. We essentially work in four sectors – energy, natural resources and extractives (such as minerals, oil and gas), infrastructure PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships), and sovereign finance/ sovereign debts/ debt restructuring.
The aim of our mandate is to build sustainable legal capacity within governments so that, when dealing with the private sector in particular, the government is able to come from an informed perspective and enter into contracts that are fair, equitable, and can sustain the passage of time. Ultimately, what you want is an agreement that will survive the change in government or the change of circumstances in the market, among other factors.
- As Director and CEO, we note that your responsibilities include the day-to-day administration of the Facility and oversight of the Facility’s operations in providing legal advisory services, negotiations support, and capacity building to African countries. As the legal representative of the Facility, you also foster collaboration with relevant partners and organisations to enhance the impact of the ALSF’s programmes for its beneficiaries in Africa. Could you tell us what a typical day at ALSF looks like?
The ALSF comprises 55 staff, of which 80% are lawyers. We also have support functions, administration, finance, monitoring and evaluation, and communications. At the organisational level, there’s a combination of administrative and hard lawyer’s work.
At the outset, the work that we do involves a lot of liaising with our focal points in governments. We have that proximity with them that helps us either guide them when that’s required or anticipate their needs or understand emerging trends. What would happen in any given day for an ALSF staff is to touch base on the projects with stakeholders, be it internal or external, and make sure that they counter whatever can be a stumbling block in the project, for instance, either the government is not responsive or one particular milestone in the work stream of the project is not moving well enough. Or, plan a trip on the ground to have in-person meetings or to visit the project or the site.
There’s also a bit of administrative process that is involved in the way we run our projects. So there’s some documentation to be signed with the government and with the law firms that support the work. Then, there’s payments to be made to our service providers.
As far as I’m concerned, a lot of my work has to do with fundraising and resource mobilisation. Our annual budget is supported for roughly one-third by the African Development Bank through the African Development Fund. And we obviously have to source the balance from donors. It’s typical development aid institutions that we work with. A key part of my work consists of maintaining good relations with the donors that we have, and expanding the scope of our donors’ base.
Part of my work also ensures that the project proposals that are tabled to the board fall within the mandate of the ALSF. So there’s also a bit of lawyers’ work in the sense that I have to review the proposal and ensure that, through me, they can be tabled to the management board for approval.
Then there is the representation of the facility. As you would appreciate, the subjects that we touch on are the pillars of the continent’s economies, be it energy, PPP, sovereign debt or natural/extractive resources. I think the ALSF’s work is being noticed more and more, and, at our end, what is important to support that visibility is to be able to demonstrate our impact. So, how does what we do as legal advisors translate into tangible results for populations? I also have a bit of advocacy and lobbying work to do for the ALSF to be considered as a key player in those discussions and on those global agenda items.
3. Could you tell us about your background in project finance? How does that help you understand the specific needs of African countries for public-private partnerships in investing in critical areas such as energy, infrastructure, natural and extractive resources, and sovereign finance sectors?
My background helps me better understand and appreciate that African governments are budget-constrained. It doesn’t explain or excuse everything, but that’s a fact.
I also understand that, sometimes, risk allocation is best done when the right party bears the right risk. Given that governments have been proven as not being necessarily good at running or handling certain types of projects, it’s clear that Project Finance or PPP schemes could and should be used more intensively, or more efficiently, on the continent.
You have some good examples. I live in Côte d’Ivoire, and a number of roadways have been built in the country in the past 10-15 years. One of them is a particularly spectacular success story. It was structured as a PPP, and it works well. It’s a toll road for which the traffic studies were done right – although they were adjusted at some points –they fundamentally got the traffic studies right. And of course, these are things you can adjust over time. But provided the work you do ahead of implementing is accurate and there’s a supporting legal and regulatory framework enabling such implementation, you can get a PPP right.
Now, the thing is, you don’t always have a framework that is enabling. You don’t always have PPP units that are capacitated or that are even autonomous from, say, the Minister of Finance. And the way the projects are structured don’t always attract private investors to put their money. So part of the work that we do is to be enablers of successful PPPs. And of course, we do that with many others, but it’s quite a daunting task.
Actually, people who don’t believe in PPPs, for me, are either in denial or lazy. Lazy because there is some work to be done to create an environment that is fertile ground for a successful PPP, and then some hard work has to be done from a government standpoint, some concessions to be made from a developer/private sector standpoint, and a deep understanding of what we’re trying to do and the outcomes we’re trying to achieve. So there is work to be done ahead of the curve. But I’m a firm believer in a well-structured PPP as a vehicle that can deliver great value across sectors – energy, road infrastructure, airports, or water, you name it.
4. In a recent interview, you note that the legal support ALSF provides helps governments enter into viable, equitable and sustainable agreements. Indeed, you mention that ALSF is the only organisation on the government side providing these advisory services for complex transactions. How does ALSF manage this huge responsibility across so many economies, especially when it comes to critical areas such as the just energy transition and ensuring that Africa’s green minerals are used for the development of the continent?
We’re all lawyers, and the lawyers within the operations team at the ALSF are specialised.
They either grew up as professionals in a technical setup, for instance, my colleague Mehdi Oomar, our legal counsel, is a PPP specialist. We have people that are very strong in the energy sector, people that have a mining background, including in government, and then transition to a law firm. So there’s that technicality in the ALSF that is very useful when it comes to having conversations with the PPP unit or the utility in the energy sector. We can have an informed dialogue with people that have a technical background. That’s something I think helps also with the credibility of the ALSF.
The other thing is we don’t work alone. We use law firms. We have panels of law firms that we pre-select based on their credentials. So for any given project, two or three of my colleagues would be part of the project team, one of them being task manager and the other supporting. We partner with a law firm that is pre-selected and that gives us the best offer, financial and technical, for this specific project. And I think that’s a very good combination because what it does is you get the technical savoir-faire from the law firm and you get the technical knowledge and closeness to the issue at the ALSF. I think that strikes the right combination.
Then the third thing is that we have lawyers of both civil law and common law. We’re able to cover the continent in terms of all different legal systems.
The final thing is our support functions, of which one very important function is the monitoring and evaluation function. That actually helps us review the impact of our work on an ongoing basis. I must say that and I must admit that one challenge we have, but that’s inherent to the legal business, is how we can demonstrate impact. For instance, for an accountant or a finance person or a salesperson, you have clear KPIs. Whether you deliver them or not, it’s clear, measurable and demonstrated. For us, the big question mark is how do you demonstrate the value and the input and the impact of legal advice in the structuring and delivering of a water sanitation project, for instance? There’s still some work to be done on our part in fine-tuning the way we articulate our impact. It’s not enough to know that the work that we do is useful, but how can we go further and prove it – and that’s something we keep on refining and working at.
5. An AfDB report notes that governments in Africa recently spent more of their budgets servicing debts than on healthcare and education. It is sobering to see the excessive debt burden incurred by African countries, not only because of external factors such as COVID but also because of structural flaws in their contracts that precipitate debt accumulation. How can Africa craft more equitable agreements, especially in an increasingly challenging global context, and what role do you envision ALSF as a facilitator, educator and protector playing in the process?
Well, helping debt management offices, for one, is important. Because they are the ones tasked with forecasts, debt contracts negotiations, and debt restructuring, when that occurs. So if your debt management office or your debt management person hasn’t been exposed to a number of complex situations, the chances of them having the skills or being equipped to defend what’s in the interest of the country, are slim at best.
An important part of our role is working with debt management offices and helping them navigate through the complexities of a given negotiation or exposing them to negotiations from an academic and practical standpoint through training, through workshops that are based on real cases. This ensures that when they are exposed to those negotiations in a real-world context, they have reflexes that they can use.
The other aspect of our capacity-building initiatives is producing key knowledge collaterals, be it handbooks, model contracts, or toolkits. Here, one particular achievement we’re quite proud of is our Sovereign Debt Handbook, which was launched last year, the second edition. This handbook is precisely aimed at debt management offices and anyone interested in understanding how debt is meant to be contracted and managed, including in times of crisis, and how to use new instruments such as debt swap or debt for climate, those kind of instruments. So it’s a comprehensive guide. That in itself represents a very important and very credible source of knowledge.
A number of countries are in debt crisis or bordering debt crisis as we speak. Those issues will be fixed through the reform of global finance architecture or debt restructuring schemes. But we see our role as paving the way for better informed debt contracts, debt agreements that include mechanisms that accommodate or that cater for a debt crisis or a debt accumulation. How do you, for instance, include your potential in critical minerals in your debt sustainability analysis? I mean, for an economy sitting on x tonnes of bauxite or lithium, if it plays its cards right, five years or ten years down the line, these are the right projections. Why wouldn’t the IMF or Standard & Poor’s take that potential into account in my debt sustainability analysis? Why would they look at me as this country with no exports revenue or with no assets? While potentially, five or ten years down the line, I’ve managed to export those resources in a sensible manner and generated revenue.
So this is the kind of reflection or thought process that we use to trigger a conversation with our clients, our governments, such that they can also have thought-provoking discussions with whoever they deal with.
6. Could you provide us with key takeaways from the ALSF report, Understanding Sovereign Debt: Options and Opportunities for Africa? What are the areas where you have seen the biggest growth for the need for services provided by ALSF? Where do you believe the greatest untapped potential lies in the continent?
In terms of our work, the sovereign finance/sovereign debt portfolio grew quite significantly over the past three years. It’s the portfolio that has grown the most, together with the energy sector. We’re very active in our capacity building activities, working with debt management offices, and producing knowledge that is then disseminated within governments. But we’re also doing debt restructuring work with a couple of African governments, helping them renegotiate their debt agreements and, for example, obtaining debt cancellation with mostly bilateral creditors. That’s in terms of what keeps us busy.
Where we see potential is in the new debt instruments – debt swaps, debt for nature, debt for climate, and carbon credits. These are instruments that are nascent in the way they’re being used but provide a great avenue to finance developments. And for a number of them, we move along with governments as they take interest in those issues and we adjust to the needs of governments so that they can start using those instruments, not in a reckless way, but in an informed manner. So new debt instruments as a way to diversify the debt origin is probably where I see the greatest potential.
Finally, core aspects that can derail a contract is something that we continually need to build capacity on. Overall, I would say contract drafting is still going to be the most important activity as we go ahead.
7. Earlier this year, in March, ALSF entered into an agreement with the Ivorian Bar Association to train Ivorian lawyers on strategic issues such as public-private partnerships (PPPs), extractive industries, sovereign debt, and complex transactions. Could you tell us more about this initiative?
We entered into this agreement at the initiative and at the request of the new head of the Bar Association in Côte d’Ivoire, Madame Florence Laurent, who was elected last year and who comes with a strong agenda on young lawyer specialisation.
To provide the context, especially in Francophone Africa, there is a long-standing trend of lawyers coming out of the law school as generalists, and then maybe specialising over time, based on experience or which type of exposure they get to certain clients. But there’s no clear and deliberate initiative to get young lawyers to pick one sector in particular and to build capacity and expertise in that sector.
If you take the four sectors that the ALSF works in, there’s a lot of room for young lawyers, especially young African lawyers, to build capacity and work either for government or for the private sector as a specialist in mining law or in energy projects, and, this may be a bit less, but in sovereign debt too. But that will come eventually as the market expands. So what we’ll be providing to the Bar of Côte d’Ivoire is that exposure to our capacity building initiatives in the four sectors that we work in.
So we will ask the young lawyers to first register on our platform, which is called the ALSF Academy, as a self-training and self-certification platform. They will take level one by themselves. Once they’ve completed level one and they have the certificate, they can apply for level two and level three. By going through level one, level two and level three, they can be referenced by the Bar and by any law firms guide, as an expert in mining, energy, PPP, etc. The idea is to help such young lawyers – you can still be a generalist of course – to wear a hat of specialists and experts that not only helps bring them new clients but also exposes them to big deals that are entered into by governments.
We want to help build a pool of African lawyers with specialised expertise in those key sectors. So that’s what we’re doing with the Bar of Côte d’Ivoire. Needless to say, it’s a model that can be replicated in other jurisdictions and it’s also part of our mandate of building capacity within law firms and African law firms.
L to R: Olivier Pognon, ALSF Director and CEO, with Manisha Dookhony, Chairperson, ALSF board
8. You came to Mauritius for the first time in April 2025. What were some of your key takeaways from your visit?
We had very good meetings. I had actually wanted to come here because we’ve been working with the government of Mauritius for over eight years and we’ve managed to close some projects. We have two active projects in the energy sector. One is a biomass project and the other is a power energy sector capacity building project.
During the visit, we met a very wide range of counterparts from government officials, sectoral ministers, the Ministry of Energy, the PPP unit, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Land and Transport. We also had a very insightful meeting with the Governor of the Bank of Mauritius.
In addition, we met with potential learning partners and academic partners because we want to strengthen the ecosystem around the ALSF capacity building initiative by partnering with people who are in the capacity building /education business. Mauritius has a couple of good prospects in that respect. We had three very intense days of meetings together with our legal counsel Mehdi Oomar and our chair Manisha Dookhony.
One of the key takeaways is that Mauritius is in need of infrastructure, especially in the energy sector. Mauritius has a strong potential for PPPs, but the legal and regulatory framework has to be unlocked so that PPPs can be structured, then come out of the pipeline.
So these are the two areas where I see us coming in to assist the government of Mauritius – in the energy sector and in the PPP sector. We’re hoping to have an ongoing relationship with the government and we’re hoping that that the visit will yield more work and more assistance from our end.
9. How do you see the next chapter for the ALSF?
The ALSF has been in existence for 17 years and actually working on projects for 15 years.
Over this period, we’ve built technical credibility as a trusted legal advisor to government. What we’re seeing is that there’s a growing demand for ALSF services. To give you rough figures, we’ve seen the number of requests that we receive increase by close to 20% since 2022. If you look at the period 2018 to 2022 versus 2023 to now, there’s been an increase of close to 20%. And the mandate of the ALSF has been extended in 2022 by another 14 years. So, we’re in service for another 11 years or so.
But with what we’re seeing, we can sincerely say that we’re only scratching the surface in terms of the assistance that is required, in terms of the work that can be done and in terms of capacitating African governments. It is important to understand that the structure of the ALSF budget and financing hasn’t changed for close to 15 years. And the ALSF is clearly not the same animal it was 15 years ago. Today the ALSF is owned by its 48 member countries and eight international organisations. We’re only shy of six countries that we’re not members on the continent. So, there is potential for the ALSF to become more autonomous, more independent from the African Development Bank. The AfDB may be the anchor funder, but we’re also encouraged by the African Development Bank to expand our donors’ base.
Ultimately, we have a strong belief that it’s high time for the members of the ALSF, the beneficiaries of the services, to also chip in and make the ALSF more efficient, more impactful, and more resilient.
