Resilience begins with governance. Weak enforcement of building codes, outdated standards, and fragmented institutional responsibilities significantly amplify infrastructure risk. Without strong governance, even well-designed infrastructure systems remain vulnerable to shocks.

Strengthening regulatory compliance and institutional capacity must therefore sit at the core of national resilience strategies. The Global Infrastructure Resilience 2025 report shows that countries with effective governance frameworks, skilled professionals, and well-coordinated institutions recover more quickly from disasters and sustain economic growth over the long term.

Critically, infrastructure agencies cannot address resilience challenges on their own. Success depends on coordinated action across ministries of finance and planning, disaster risk management authorities, subnational governments, standard-setting bodies, and the private sector. Governance for resilient infrastructure is not the responsibility of a single institution—it is a shared national endeavour. It is therefore imperative to understand the roles and responsibilities of various institutions that play an important role in locking in resilience.

CDRI is hosting three interactive learning webinars to share knowledge, highlight good practices, and foster peer-to-peer learning and cross-country collaboration. The sessions will be organised on DRI Connect, CDRI’s knowledge exchange, learning, and collaborative platform, beginning in October 2025.

The second webinar in this series, “Governance for Resilient Infrastructure,” will take place on 03 March 2026, in partnership with the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI). The session will examine governance frameworks that enable resilient infrastructure and explore the key issues and challenges facing countries across the African continent. It will also unpack findings from the Global Infrastructure Resilience Survey and the Global Infrastructure Resilience (GIR) 2025 report, highlighting the pivotal role of governance in accelerating the adoption of resilient infrastructure practices in developing countries.