PPP Stage 2
PPP appraisal and structuring
Overview
Appraising a PPP means checking that the project is viable and in the public interest. Structuring a PPP consists of allocating risks, roles, and responsibilities to the various parties. PPP practitioners are typically responsible for conducting the PPP appraisal and proposing the PPP structure.
Appraise the PPP
A PPP appraisal assesses technical and economic viability, environmental and social impacts, legal compliance, commercial viability, value for money, fiscal implications, and the agency's capacity to manage the project. This ensures the project is strategic, financially sound, legally compliant, and sustainable, maximizing value for money and impact.
A gender-responsive appraisal integrates gender considerations into each stage, including stakeholder consultations, gap analysis, impact assessments, and action planning. This approach ensures projects are inclusive, accessible, and beneficial for women and marginalized groups, driving equitable and sustainable development.
Conduct gender-sensitive stakeholder consultations
Effective stakeholder consultations are crucial throughout the PPP project cycle to identify critical issues, clarify project impacts, and build public support. Gender-sensitive consultations actively engage women, men, and marginalized groups to understand their distinct needs and priorities. These needs often differ—women may prioritize safety, accessibility, service reliability, and social infrastructure due to caregiving responsibilities and specific mobility patterns, while men may focus more on economic opportunities and efficient infrastructure that supports industry and commerce. Recognizing these differences enables PPP practitioners to design projects that are genuinely inclusive and responsive to community dynamics.
Local inclusion experts and civil society actors play a key role in facilitating these consultations, ensuring diverse perspectives are captured and addressed in project planning. Their involvement helps bridge gaps, particularly for marginalized voices often excluded from decision-making processes, leading to more resilient, equitable, and widely supported infrastructure projects.
Conduct gender gap analysis and gender impact assessment
Conducting a gender gap analysis is essential for identifying disparities and ensuring inclusive project planning. In Peru, a mining company faced protests from single women renters who were left without compensation when their rented homes were threatened by expansion. While property owners were compensated, renters—primarily women—were overlooked, leading to social unrest and reputational damage. Had a gender gap analysis been conducted, the company could have anticipated these risks and devised fair compensation measures. Addressing gender gaps not only promotes equity but also reduces project risks and fosters community support.
Develop a gender action plan
A Gender Action Plan outlines gender-specific goals, activities, roles, responsibilities, timelines, and costs for PPP projects. Built on gender gap analysis and impact assessments, it prescribes targeted interventions to maximize community benefits during project preparation, construction, operation, and social engagement. It sets gender-responsive targets and output specifications, holding private parties accountable through clear incentives and monitoring. To ensure effectiveness, the plan should be integrated into PPP contracts and structured by project phases, including transaction management, land acquisition, construction, and operation. Key indicators track progress on closing gender gaps, enhancing decision-making roles, and creating lasting job opportunities.
Structuring the PPPs
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Structure the PPP
Structuring the PPP means allocating responsibilities, risks, and rights to each party to the PPP contract. Different PPP structuring decisions can affect or empower women.
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Assess gender-specific project risks and consider gender aspects when determining risk and responsibility allocation
A risk register (a comprehensive list of all the risks associated with the project) should be created when structuring a PPP. Gender-specific risks can be identified through the gender gap analysis, gender impact assessment, and other assessments carried out during the project appraisal.
Gender risks, constraints, and opportunities specific to the local context (including gender roles and gender gaps in the affected communities, as well as the applicable gender policy and legal framework, if any) should be considered when determining the allocation of risks and corresponding responsibilities.
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Ensure project structure complies with Multilateral Development Banks’ (MDBs) and International Financial Institutions’ (IFIs) applicable gender-related safeguards
Many IFIs and MDBs address women’s specific needs in their safeguards. To obtain support or financing from some of these institutions requires projects compliance with their gender-related safeguards.
Explore the executive summary and list of tables, figures, and boxes within this module.
PPP Stage 2: PPP appraisal and structuring
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Figure 2.1
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Figure 2.2
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Figure 2.3
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Figure 2.4
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Figure 2.5
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Figure 2.6
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Figure 2.7
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Figure 2.8
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Figure 2.9
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Example 2.1
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Example 2.2
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Example 2.3
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Example 2.4
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Example 2.5
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Example 2.6
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Example 2.7
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Example 2.8
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Example 2.9
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Table 2.1
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Table 2.2
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Table 2.3
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Table 2.4
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Table 2.5
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Table 2.6
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- ADB Asian Development Bank
- PPIAF Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility
- AFDB African Development Bank
- PPP Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility
- CSO Community Service Organization
- UN United Nations
- ESIA Environmental and Social Impact Assessment
- UNFPA The United Nations Population Fund
- GAP Gender Action Plan
- UNICEF United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
- GBV Gender-Based Violence
- UNOPS United Nations Office for Project Services
- IDB Inter-American Development Bank
- USP Unsolicited proposal
- IFC International Finance Corporation
- VFM Value-for-money
- IFI International Financial Institution
- MDB Multilateral Development Bank
- NGO Non-Governmental Organization
Care economy:
the sector of economic activities, both paid and unpaid, related to the provision of social and material care. It includes care for children, the elderly, and the disabled, health care, education as well as other personal services, all of which contribute to nurturing and supporting present and future populations.1
Feasibility study:
a full feasibility study (also referred to as a business case) is a detailed investigation of the project. It assesses the technical, financial, and legal feasibility of a proposed project, whether the project satisfies a public need and is a good public investment decision based on an economic viability analysis (cost-benefit analysis), as well as whether it is environmentally and socially sustainable.2
(Applying/using a) Gender lens:
an approach to identify and examine gendered differences in the development and implementation of processes, procedures, and practices, enabling users to better understand and assess the importance and impact of these differences. Using a gender lens means focusing on how prevailing cultural norms and attitudes about people’s gender identity and expression affects how they are seen, or not seen, impacting on their opportunities, access to and ownership of resources, and their capacity to enjoy and exercise their human rights.
Gender action plan:
a time-bound plan that lays out the goals, activities of the project, and related responsible persons and costs for closing the gaps in outcomes for both women and men. These activities could be a part of the core development, building and operations of a project, or they could be part of the social engagement angle of the project, designed to provide the fullest benefit to the community.3
Gender analysis:
a socio-economic analysis of gender relations that provides information about the different conditions of women and men, and the different effects that projects may have on them.4 Gender analysis highlights the differences between and among women, men, girls, and boys in terms of their relative distribution of resources, opportunities, constraints, and power in a given context.5
Gender-based violence:
violence that is directed against a person on the basis of gender. Gender-based violence constitutes a breach of the fundamental right to life, liberty, security, dignity, equality between women and men, non-discrimination, and physical and mental integrity.6
Gender blindness:
the failure to recognize that the roles, responsibilities, and behavior patterns of women and men are assigned to them in specific social, cultural, economic, and political contexts and backgrounds. Gender blind projects do not consider different roles and diverse needs and therefore might reinforce gender inequalities. By deliberately or inadvertently disregarding gender as a significant factor in interactions or allocations of resources between people, gender-blind projects maintain the status quo and do not help transform the unequal structure of gender relations.7
Gender-certified businesses:
businesses that have demonstrated their commitment to gender equality and that have obtained a certification from an entity recognized for its specialization in assessing gender responsiveness in businesses.
Gender discriminatory project:
a project that reinforces harmful and negative gender norms and actively harms women and girls.
Gender equality:
refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women, men, girls, and boys. Gender equality concerns and fully engages all genders while recognizing that neither all men nor all women are a homogenous group.8
Gender gaps:
differences between the way women and men are treated in society; between what they do and achieve; and in their respective access to opportunities, resources, and services. ‘Closing gender gaps’ includes (but is not limited to) activities that contribute to: improving women’s human endowments (i.e. gaps in education and health outcomes); removing constraints for more and better jobs for women; addressing barriers to women’s ownership and control of assets; and enhancing women’s leadership, voice, and agency while engaging men and boys.
- 1. Open Canada (2018). Why Canadians should care about the global care economy. Accessed February 2023.
- 2. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) – A Primer. P.32
- 3. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 4. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 5. Agnes A. Babugura, Camila Villard Duran, Mariola Acosta & Júlia Ferraz (2023). Taking Gender Mainstreaming Seriously in Climate Finance
- 6. The World Bank (2023). Violence Against Women & Girls - Resource Guide Terminology
- 7. UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP, UN Women. Gender Equality, United Nations (UN) Coherence and You. Definition featured in the United Nations Women Training Centre Gender Equality Glossary. Accessed 17 February 2023. https://trainingcentre.unwomen.org/ mod/glossary/
- 8. Agnes A. Babugura, Camila Villard Duran, Mariola Acosta & Júlia Ferraz (2023). Taking Gender Mainstreaming Seriously in Climate Finance
- 9. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13 10. European Institute for Gender Equality. Gender statistics and indicators
- 10. European Institute for Gender Equality. Gender statistics and indicators
- 11. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 12. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 13. United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. https://www.un-redd.org/ glossary/gender-sensitive
- 14. “Mainstreaming Gender in Infrastructure: Desk Review.” June 30, 2021. P 21.
- 15. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.32
- 16. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 17. UN Women (2017). The Power of Procurement: How to Source from Women-Owned Businesses—Corporate Guide to GenderResponsive Procurement.
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Figure 2.1
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Figure 2.2
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Figure 2.3
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Figure 2.4
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Figure 2.5
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Figure 2.6
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Figure 2.7
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Figure 2.8
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Figure 2.9
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Example 2.1
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Example 2.2
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Example 2.3
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Example 2.4
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Example 2.5
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Example 2.6
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Example 2.7
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Example 2.8
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Example 2.9
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Table 2.1
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Table 2.2
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Table 2.3
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Table 2.4
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Table 2.5
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Table 2.6
- ADB Asian Development Bank
- PPIAF Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility
- AFDB African Development Bank
- PPP Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility
- CSO Community Service Organization
- UN United Nations
- ESIA Environmental and Social Impact Assessment
- UNFPA The United Nations Population Fund
- GAP Gender Action Plan
- UNICEF United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
- GBV Gender-Based Violence
- UNOPS United Nations Office for Project Services
- IDB Inter-American Development Bank
- USP Unsolicited proposal
- IFC International Finance Corporation
- VFM Value-for-money
- IFI International Financial Institution
- MDB Multilateral Development Bank
- NGO Non-Governmental Organization
Care economy:
the sector of economic activities, both paid and unpaid, related to the provision of social and material care. It includes care for children, the elderly, and the disabled, health care, education as well as other personal services, all of which contribute to nurturing and supporting present and future populations.1
Feasibility study:
a full feasibility study (also referred to as a business case) is a detailed investigation of the project. It assesses the technical, financial, and legal feasibility of a proposed project, whether the project satisfies a public need and is a good public investment decision based on an economic viability analysis (cost-benefit analysis), as well as whether it is environmentally and socially sustainable.2
(Applying/using a) Gender lens:
an approach to identify and examine gendered differences in the development and implementation of processes, procedures, and practices, enabling users to better understand and assess the importance and impact of these differences. Using a gender lens means focusing on how prevailing cultural norms and attitudes about people’s gender identity and expression affects how they are seen, or not seen, impacting on their opportunities, access to and ownership of resources, and their capacity to enjoy and exercise their human rights.
Gender action plan:
a time-bound plan that lays out the goals, activities of the project, and related responsible persons and costs for closing the gaps in outcomes for both women and men. These activities could be a part of the core development, building and operations of a project, or they could be part of the social engagement angle of the project, designed to provide the fullest benefit to the community.3
Gender analysis:
a socio-economic analysis of gender relations that provides information about the different conditions of women and men, and the different effects that projects may have on them.4 Gender analysis highlights the differences between and among women, men, girls, and boys in terms of their relative distribution of resources, opportunities, constraints, and power in a given context.5
Gender-based violence:
violence that is directed against a person on the basis of gender. Gender-based violence constitutes a breach of the fundamental right to life, liberty, security, dignity, equality between women and men, non-discrimination, and physical and mental integrity.6
Gender blindness:
the failure to recognize that the roles, responsibilities, and behavior patterns of women and men are assigned to them in specific social, cultural, economic, and political contexts and backgrounds. Gender blind projects do not consider different roles and diverse needs and therefore might reinforce gender inequalities. By deliberately or inadvertently disregarding gender as a significant factor in interactions or allocations of resources between people, gender-blind projects maintain the status quo and do not help transform the unequal structure of gender relations.7
Gender-certified businesses:
businesses that have demonstrated their commitment to gender equality and that have obtained a certification from an entity recognized for its specialization in assessing gender responsiveness in businesses.
Gender discriminatory project:
a project that reinforces harmful and negative gender norms and actively harms women and girls.
Gender equality:
refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women, men, girls, and boys. Gender equality concerns and fully engages all genders while recognizing that neither all men nor all women are a homogenous group.8
Gender gaps:
differences between the way women and men are treated in society; between what they do and achieve; and in their respective access to opportunities, resources, and services. ‘Closing gender gaps’ includes (but is not limited to) activities that contribute to: improving women’s human endowments (i.e. gaps in education and health outcomes); removing constraints for more and better jobs for women; addressing barriers to women’s ownership and control of assets; and enhancing women’s leadership, voice, and agency while engaging men and boys.
- 1. Open Canada (2018). Why Canadians should care about the global care economy. Accessed February 2023.
- 2. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) – A Primer. P.32
- 3. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 4. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 5. Agnes A. Babugura, Camila Villard Duran, Mariola Acosta & Júlia Ferraz (2023). Taking Gender Mainstreaming Seriously in Climate Finance
- 6. The World Bank (2023). Violence Against Women & Girls - Resource Guide Terminology
- 7. UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP, UN Women. Gender Equality, United Nations (UN) Coherence and You. Definition featured in the United Nations Women Training Centre Gender Equality Glossary. Accessed 17 February 2023. https://trainingcentre.unwomen.org/ mod/glossary/
- 8. Agnes A. Babugura, Camila Villard Duran, Mariola Acosta & Júlia Ferraz (2023). Taking Gender Mainstreaming Seriously in Climate Finance
- 9. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13 10. European Institute for Gender Equality. Gender statistics and indicators
- 10. European Institute for Gender Equality. Gender statistics and indicators
- 11. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 12. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 13. United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. https://www.un-redd.org/ glossary/gender-sensitive
- 14. “Mainstreaming Gender in Infrastructure: Desk Review.” June 30, 2021. P 21.
- 15. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.32
- 16. The World Bank Group, IFC, PPIAF, Canada (2019). Gender Equality, Infrastructure, and PPPs – A Primer. P.13
- 17. UN Women (2017). The Power of Procurement: How to Source from Women-Owned Businesses—Corporate Guide to GenderResponsive Procurement.