African infrastructure investment top priority for continent - Prof Jeffrey Sachs

Prof Sachs

By Mutale Kapekele

Closing Africa’s infrastructure gap is a top priority in order to put the continent on a path for double digit growth and sustainable development. This is according to world-renowned professor of economics, Jeffrey Sachs.

Last week, Zambia joined thousands of delegates who assembled in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to set the new financing architecture for a new global partnership. The event themed “Unlocking Public and Private Capital for African Infrastructure” was organized by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

“There is no choice, Africa needs 10 per cent per year of economic growth in the next 15 years,” Professor Sachs said. The only way to achieve this, according to him, was to focus on large-scale investments in trans-national infrastructure projects in power, roads, broadband, and other core regional infrastructure needs.

Sachs, director of the SDSN and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, spoke on the side-lines of the Third Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Thousands of delegates have descended on Addis Ababa to set the new financing architecture for a new global partnership.

Africa needs more of such projects 

For Africa to realize the 2030 timeframe, Sachs, urged the global community to rally around the NEPAD agenda, as the continent’s strategy for implementing cross-border infrastructure projects.  “We need to help support NEPAD achieve its goals”, he said.

The NEPAD Agency has identified Africa’s most important infrastructure needs within the context of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), which provides the framework to implement 51 priority programs and projects in the sectors of energy, transport, broadband and trans boundary water.

Speaking on the issue of how to crowd in investment, Sachs encouraged African economies to forge partnerships with East Asia, tap into capital markets and strengthen continental bodies such as the NEPAD Agency and African Development Bank.

Chief Executive Officer of the NEPAD Agency, Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, highlighted that Africa’s challenge was not a lack of resources, but a lack of bankable projects. “We need to invest in the capacity to invest”. It is about proposing structured projects, he said. 

Mayaki mentioned the complementary instruments that have been developed to build the necessary capacity for early-stage project preparation and the Africa50 Fund to finance the implementation of PIDA and other regional infrastructure projects.

Mayaki also underscored the important role of Regional Economic Communities in providing the enabling environment for project implementation, through harmonized policies and regulatory frameworks.

The best way for Africa to achieve its infrastructure goals was to tap into a Global Infrastructure Investment Platform (GIIP), he said. The objective of GIIP was to put forward an ambitious proposal that would allow long-term investors to ramp up their infrastructure asset holdings, with an allocation target of up to 10 percent of assets under management over a 15 year horizon.

The event brought together leading representatives from the private and public sector, as well as global think tanks.

The NEPAD Agency, SDSN, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, agreed to set up a working group that will move Africa’s regional infrastructure financing agenda forward.