Foundations 19 – Infrastructure Space

In Africa almost all infrastructural indicators lag behind those of other regions of the world. Carlos Lopes knows this from personal experience, because the Executive Secretary of the Economic Com- mission for Africa (ECA) is from Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s most underdeveloped countries. According to Lopes, the deficien- cies in Africa are evidenced mainly in roads, railways, ports & air- ports, information & communication technology, and in the energy sector. And these shortcomings have serious consequences, as he stated in his keynote speech: “It is estimated that these deficits hamper national economic growth by two percentage points every year and cut business productivity by as much as 40 percent.”

A transportation corridor for road and rail will traverse the continent from Dakar to Djibouti. (www.africa-eu-partnership.org)

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Lack of proper infrastructure is a serious bottleneck for private business.

The example of transportation illustrates how deficient infrastruc- ture hinders the private sector. “It is more expensive to get a con- tainer from the port of Mombasa in Kenya to Kigali in Rwanda than it is to get the same container from China all the way to Mombasa.”

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Africa has the potential to generate significantly more domestic financial resources.

So it’s not surprising that the African leaders, often in alliance with the African Union, focus on large investments in this sector. “A number of mega-initiatives are making the business case for connecting African countries,” explains Lopes. These include pro- jects such as an 8,715-kilometer-long transportation corridor from Dakar to Djibouti for USD 18 billion, a natural gas pipeline from Nigeria via Algeria to Spain for USD 23.7 billion, or the LAPSSET Corridor, which will connect Kenya’s Lamu port to South Sudan and Ethiopia. Much is also happening in Africa in the field of energy produc- tion. The Ethiopian project “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” is currently being implemented in the Blue Nile basin. Producing 5,250 megawatts, it will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa. The reservoir will hold 74 billion cubic meters of water.

A rail link between Cape Town and Cairo is an old dream yet to be realized – here a train of the “Cape to Cairo Railway” in Belgian Congo between 1900 and 1915. (www.digitallibrary.usc.edu)

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