{"id":3653,"date":"2019-07-09T08:03:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T08:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=3653"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:24","slug":"the-long-road-to-fixing-africas-infrastructure-deficit-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/07\/09\/the-long-road-to-fixing-africas-infrastructure-deficit-heres-how\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Road to Fixing Africa’s Infrastructure Deficit – Here’s How"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Juanita Williams<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third President & Chief\nExecutive Officer <\/em><\/strong>of the <\/em>Africa Finance Corporation, Samaila Zubairu<\/a><\/em><\/strong> – an accomplished\nInfrastructure development finance specialist with over 29 years of\nprofessional experience – after the Afreximbank meetings in Moscow, where\nthe talk centered on improving infrastructure on the continent and how crucial\nprojects will be financed.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the African Finance Corporation’s (AFC) role in what could\nbe considered the continent’s biggest challenge?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AFC is one of those initiatives which demonstrates\nthat Africans are taking ownership and responsibility for our challenges, our\nproblems, our opportunities and our potential. African states decided in 2007\nto create a financial institution that would provide solutions to Africa’s\ninfrastructure deficit and challenging business environment by developing and\nfinancing infrastructure, natural resources and industrial assets with a view\nto enhancing productivity and generating economic growth for the African state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have since executed that mandate through investments\nin energy, transport and logistics, natural resources, telecoms and promoting\nIntra-African trade and export trade from Africa. Since we were created in\n2007, AFC has invested U.S. $5.5 billion across 28 African countries. Back then\ninvestment requirements for infrastructure were about U.S. $30 billion\nneeded annually for 10 years. That number has since grown to U.S. $170 billion\nrequired annually. If we look at that number because it is so huge, the highest\nneed is in water and sanitation where U.S. $67 billion is required annually;\nnext to that is energy with U.S. $50 billion required annually, transport and\nlogistics with U.S. $47 billion required. And then ICT needs U.S. $7 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In general, over the past six to seven years, Africa as a\nwhole has invested about U.S. $77 billion. That leaves a funding gap… some\npeople say we need U.S.$100 billion, some say it’s U.S. $70 billion, but I look\nat the higher number because you have to maintain what exists – because if we\ndon’t maintain it, it deteriorates and it adds to the gap. So African\ngovernments have actually been the biggest investor followed by Infrastructure\nConstruction for Africa, which is the combination of the G8, development\ninstitutions like ourselves and other institutions from Africa, and then we\nhave China and the Middle East investors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does Africa need to move forward on these plans?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More private capital to fund infrastructure investments –\nit is so important because we know that infrastructure deficits reduced GDP\ngrowth by 2 percent and reduce productivity by 40 percent, and if you put that\nwithin the context of a young continent where 50 percent of the population is\nunder the age of 35 years, possibly under 24 years old, then you can see the\nchallenges. You have to understand that over half the continent has no access\nto electricity, then you see why we need to do things differently. We have to\nlook at what they call ecosystems if you are looking at infrastructure\ndevelopment. You have to understand that we need to do more beneficiation on\nthe content. We have to create more jobs on the continent, we have to provide\nthe infrastructure that will allow for higher regional trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today Africa has the lowest regional trade. We heard that it is about 15 percent today but the best estimate is at 18 percent. That is so low compared to the European Union where we have about 70 percent of trade within the union. Asia has 60 percent within the union, North America about 40 percent. The reason why we don’t have enough trade within Africa is that you need to be able to move goods and services and people across the region, and infrastructure is required for that to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read\nmore<\/a> on allAfrica<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Juanita Williams Third President & Chief Executive Officer of the Africa Finance Corporation, Samaila Zubairu – an accomplished Infrastructure development finance specialist with over 29 years of professional experience – after the Afreximbank meetings…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}