Risk Management in Transport PPP Projects
In the Islamic Countries
114
Box 17 PPP in operation: the HKB Bridge
The 3rd Abidjan Bridge (now officially named after the former Ivorian President Henri Konan
Bédié), connecting the municipalities of Cocody and Marcory, is one of the flagship PPP initiatives
in Côte d’Ivoire. The project includes a 1.5 km long bridge, a new 6.7 km road segment including
a major interchange, two stretches of motorway and a 21-lane toll plaza. The main objective of
the bridge was to reduce congestion on the two pre-existing bridges crossing the lagoon, the
Houphouët-Boigny Bridge (built in the 1950s) and the Charles de Gaulle Bridge (1960s).
Project preparation and procurement. The project of the third bridge has a quite long history,
as it was part of Abidjan urban development plans since the Badani Masterplan completed in
1952, when the city population was less than 100 thousand inhabitants, compared to over 4.7
million for the metropolitan area according to the 2014 census.
However, only in the 1990s the activities aiming at turning the project into reality began. In 1996,
a competitive bidding process was held to select the company in charge of building the third
bridge, on the basis of a BOT PPP scheme. The Bouygues Group was selected as the preferred
bidder, and a special purpose company (SOCOPRIM) was set up to construct and operate the
bridge. Because of the grant provided to support the financial viability of the project, the
government of Côte d’Ivoire has around 19% share of SOCOPRIM with two board seats.
It is also worth mentioning that the initiative of establishing a Public-Private Partnership in the
road sector was at the time pioneering in Côte d’Ivoire, to the extent that the government had to
set up for this purpose a new regulatory framework allowing private road concessions.
Contract negotiation and construction phase. The negotiating phase took a relatively short
time and was considered balanced for all sides, also because the project was backed by high
political support, on the ground that it was considered crucial to solving the main traffic
bottleneck in the city of Abidjan. The detailed studies and design, as well as the technical approval
process, were concluded in 1999 and works were ready to start in the same year, but the project
halted due to the instabilities that lasted for a decade.
The duration of the concession was set to a 30-year operation period, after which the bridge shall
be returned to government (BOT). Under a classical DBFO scheme, SOCOPRIM is in charge of
design, build, financing, management (especially tolling) and maintenance.
The construction effectively began in 2011 and was completed with no major issues three years
later, with the opening of the bridge in December 2014. On the side of the contracting authority,
BNETD was in charge of compliance verification, approval of the detailed design as well as
monitoring and compliance control of the work execution with respect to the approved project.
In consideration of the high investment cost (over 200 billion CFA), the project financial viability
was endured thanks to a combination of grants (28% of the investment cost) and state
guarantees. Given the tariffs sets at the tender stage, the government guarantees a minimum
traffic volume on the bridge, which it has to compensate in case of underperformance. A profit-
sharing mechanism is also foreseen in the contract arrangement in the event of an