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AFRICA entered into 2012 with the development of the continent’s weak and dilapidated infrastructure being top of its to-do list.
Roads, power, pipelines, ports and technology parks are all part of the infrastructure package that the continent wants to use to lift the people out of poverty.
In February government officials from across the continent meet experts, financiers and other independent consultants, in Johannesburg, to discuss opportunities for investment and financing in the field of infrastructure construction. For years policymakers have been slow to see the link between trade and infrastructure. Countries want to get the products to the market, yet the road or rail network is sub-standard and where adequate infrastructure does exist between countries, there are the prohibitive tariff barriers.
It is these basics that have to be addressed if the continent wants to bid goodbye to poverty and the attendant bloody conflicts as a result of fighting for resources.
Investment is key
Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development, who has written extensively on Africa’s development, told ChinAfrica that the continent requires massive investment in infrastructure for it to meet its development goals.
“It [Africa] will need all the support it can get, including its own military [to help implement the projects],” Juma said.
now that’s not just banter. There are oil explorations going on in Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries like Kenya, South Sudan, Chad and Gabon. In nigeria, there’s the multibillion Eko-Atlantic City project. There’s the port in Kenya’s coastal town of Lamu that is set to be the destination of ships with goods destined for Ethiopia, South Sudan and Uganda. So obviously infrastructure won’t just be a port, but also a road and rail line will be required.
There are also dozens of highways that have to be paved and expanded, as the governments, through their regional trading blocs like the East Africa Community(EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), seek economic gain from the huge demand for goods and services in the regional markets.
For all these to happen, there’s the obvious need for billions of dollars to be pumped into the projects. Then there’s the question of expertise, so that the roads, railways or ports do not break down within weeks of being handed-over. Add to that mix the crucial need for cheap but quality maintenance, and you see why Juma insisted that the continent needs “all the support it can get.”
At a KPMG-convened Africa Conversation, titled Challenges and Opportunities in African Infrastructure in 2011, Piet Sebola, Project Manager at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, said that along with bankable projects, the successful achievement of financial closure for infrastructure projects is a major concern.
“Infrastructure projects take a long time to implement, starting from feasibility studies and then taking them through to the market to assess. By the time a project is announced and financial closure is achieved, a long time passes. We will have to develop a pipeline of projects which are bankable in order to leverage private capital,”Sebola said.
Power shortage
The Africa Development Bank has projected that the continent will grow at 5.8 percent in 2012. That is an extravagant projection given the recurring droughts and erratic rainfall patterns. Droughts and rainfall have an effect on hydropower generation, and that has an effect on production.
According to a World Bank study, “Africa’s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation,” electricity is top of the list of things that slow down the continent’s growth.
“More than 30 African countries experience power shortages and regular interruptions to their service. The underlying causes vary: failures to bring on new capacity to keep pace with the demands of economic growth, droughts that reduced hydropower in East Africa, oil price hikes that inhibited affordability of diesel imports for many West African countries, and conflicts that destroyed power infrastructure in fragile states,” noted the study.
According to the World Bank’s study carried out in 2010, the 48 Sub-Saharan African countries with 800 million people generate the same electrical output as Spain with 45 million people does.
“Power consumption, at 124 kwh per capita annually and dropping, is only 10 percent of that found elsewhere in the developing world, barely enough to power one 100-watt light bulb per person for 3 hours a day,” said the World Bank report.
The remedy for this is to pump in money toward infrastructure. The report said the continent has to invest $93 billion in infrastructure every year to achieve industrialized status. The priorities right now are roads and power. The continent needs to generate 7,000 MW of electricity every year. It also has to rollout regional power trade through high-voltage transmission lines.
Roads and railways are equally essential. They need to pass through the fertile agricultural land so that the produce gets out and reaches the markets or the factories. The roads must be all-season, so that they are not rendered impassable in the rainy season.
The land under irrigation also needs to be expanded, because food security, like energy, should be a priority for the continent. The wisdom is that hungry people are not productive.
Fiber-optics too has boosted growth on the continent. The GSM Association(a body which represents the interests of mobile phone operators worldwide) estimates that the next frontier will be on mobile broadband, and that in the next three years, there will be 240 million broadband connections in Africa.
The same way the undersea fiber-optic cable lowered the cost of communication and hence the cost of doing business – with the shift to fiber from the expensive satellite mode - broadband will leverage on the investments already made in terrestrial cables to provide faster connection speeds to the Internet. That kind of speed will spur innovation in technology and according to the GSM Association’s dispatch Sub-Saharan Africa could see the creation of “up to 27 million new jobs, increase GDP per capita by 5.2 percent, which will directly lift 40 million people out of poverty by 2025.”
China’s role
So, how does China fit in? When it comes to electricity and fuel China is at the center of it all. It is in Kenya with oil exploration and geo-thermal generation of power. It is also in Ethiopia investing in the Gibe III hydropower project on the Omo River. Then there’s a hydropower dam in Ghana, while in Angola, Chad, nigeria and Sudan, China is either exploring or already helping with drilling of oil. There’s also a pipeline being built in Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan.
As for investment in roads, the Chinese are heavily involved. Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya are all beneficiaries.
“China has not only increased its admission of African students in its universities, but it is also focused on strengthening the continent’s scientific infrastructure. More recently, China launched a postdoctoral program for Africans. The candidates will understudy China’s science parks, but each will also return home with scientific equipment worth $22,000. no other country in the world has offered such support to African scientists and engineers,” Professor Juma noted in one of the debates on devel- opment in TheEconomist two years ago.
Africa knows it has problems and it has the solutions. But funding remains the problem. Governments have to find other sources of funding to supplement the aid from the Chinese and other external donors and investors. Countries need to rope in the private sector through the PublicPrivate Partnerships and governments have to also ease off their dependence on the fuel levy fund to build roads.
Concessions too could come in handy as a form of financing while issues of ownership and collection of duty in the case of toll roads require resolution in order to effectively manage funding for roads.
If the procurement laws are streamlined to curb corruption, quality checks are made compulsory in the execution of the projects and costs are kept to the minimum the continent may just see its infrastructure dreams realized.
(Reporting from Kenya )
Roads, power, pipelines, ports and technology parks are all part of the infrastructure package that the continent wants to use to lift the people out of poverty.
In February government officials from across the continent meet experts, financiers and other independent consultants, in Johannesburg, to discuss opportunities for investment and financing in the field of infrastructure construction. For years policymakers have been slow to see the link between trade and infrastructure. Countries want to get the products to the market, yet the road or rail network is sub-standard and where adequate infrastructure does exist between countries, there are the prohibitive tariff barriers.
It is these basics that have to be addressed if the continent wants to bid goodbye to poverty and the attendant bloody conflicts as a result of fighting for resources.
Investment is key
Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development, who has written extensively on Africa’s development, told ChinAfrica that the continent requires massive investment in infrastructure for it to meet its development goals.
“It [Africa] will need all the support it can get, including its own military [to help implement the projects],” Juma said.
now that’s not just banter. There are oil explorations going on in Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries like Kenya, South Sudan, Chad and Gabon. In nigeria, there’s the multibillion Eko-Atlantic City project. There’s the port in Kenya’s coastal town of Lamu that is set to be the destination of ships with goods destined for Ethiopia, South Sudan and Uganda. So obviously infrastructure won’t just be a port, but also a road and rail line will be required.
There are also dozens of highways that have to be paved and expanded, as the governments, through their regional trading blocs like the East Africa Community(EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), seek economic gain from the huge demand for goods and services in the regional markets.
For all these to happen, there’s the obvious need for billions of dollars to be pumped into the projects. Then there’s the question of expertise, so that the roads, railways or ports do not break down within weeks of being handed-over. Add to that mix the crucial need for cheap but quality maintenance, and you see why Juma insisted that the continent needs “all the support it can get.”
At a KPMG-convened Africa Conversation, titled Challenges and Opportunities in African Infrastructure in 2011, Piet Sebola, Project Manager at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, said that along with bankable projects, the successful achievement of financial closure for infrastructure projects is a major concern.
“Infrastructure projects take a long time to implement, starting from feasibility studies and then taking them through to the market to assess. By the time a project is announced and financial closure is achieved, a long time passes. We will have to develop a pipeline of projects which are bankable in order to leverage private capital,”Sebola said.
Power shortage
The Africa Development Bank has projected that the continent will grow at 5.8 percent in 2012. That is an extravagant projection given the recurring droughts and erratic rainfall patterns. Droughts and rainfall have an effect on hydropower generation, and that has an effect on production.
According to a World Bank study, “Africa’s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation,” electricity is top of the list of things that slow down the continent’s growth.
“More than 30 African countries experience power shortages and regular interruptions to their service. The underlying causes vary: failures to bring on new capacity to keep pace with the demands of economic growth, droughts that reduced hydropower in East Africa, oil price hikes that inhibited affordability of diesel imports for many West African countries, and conflicts that destroyed power infrastructure in fragile states,” noted the study.
According to the World Bank’s study carried out in 2010, the 48 Sub-Saharan African countries with 800 million people generate the same electrical output as Spain with 45 million people does.
“Power consumption, at 124 kwh per capita annually and dropping, is only 10 percent of that found elsewhere in the developing world, barely enough to power one 100-watt light bulb per person for 3 hours a day,” said the World Bank report.
The remedy for this is to pump in money toward infrastructure. The report said the continent has to invest $93 billion in infrastructure every year to achieve industrialized status. The priorities right now are roads and power. The continent needs to generate 7,000 MW of electricity every year. It also has to rollout regional power trade through high-voltage transmission lines.
Roads and railways are equally essential. They need to pass through the fertile agricultural land so that the produce gets out and reaches the markets or the factories. The roads must be all-season, so that they are not rendered impassable in the rainy season.
The land under irrigation also needs to be expanded, because food security, like energy, should be a priority for the continent. The wisdom is that hungry people are not productive.
Fiber-optics too has boosted growth on the continent. The GSM Association(a body which represents the interests of mobile phone operators worldwide) estimates that the next frontier will be on mobile broadband, and that in the next three years, there will be 240 million broadband connections in Africa.
The same way the undersea fiber-optic cable lowered the cost of communication and hence the cost of doing business – with the shift to fiber from the expensive satellite mode - broadband will leverage on the investments already made in terrestrial cables to provide faster connection speeds to the Internet. That kind of speed will spur innovation in technology and according to the GSM Association’s dispatch Sub-Saharan Africa could see the creation of “up to 27 million new jobs, increase GDP per capita by 5.2 percent, which will directly lift 40 million people out of poverty by 2025.”
China’s role
So, how does China fit in? When it comes to electricity and fuel China is at the center of it all. It is in Kenya with oil exploration and geo-thermal generation of power. It is also in Ethiopia investing in the Gibe III hydropower project on the Omo River. Then there’s a hydropower dam in Ghana, while in Angola, Chad, nigeria and Sudan, China is either exploring or already helping with drilling of oil. There’s also a pipeline being built in Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan.
As for investment in roads, the Chinese are heavily involved. Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya are all beneficiaries.
“China has not only increased its admission of African students in its universities, but it is also focused on strengthening the continent’s scientific infrastructure. More recently, China launched a postdoctoral program for Africans. The candidates will understudy China’s science parks, but each will also return home with scientific equipment worth $22,000. no other country in the world has offered such support to African scientists and engineers,” Professor Juma noted in one of the debates on devel- opment in TheEconomist two years ago.
Africa knows it has problems and it has the solutions. But funding remains the problem. Governments have to find other sources of funding to supplement the aid from the Chinese and other external donors and investors. Countries need to rope in the private sector through the PublicPrivate Partnerships and governments have to also ease off their dependence on the fuel levy fund to build roads.
Concessions too could come in handy as a form of financing while issues of ownership and collection of duty in the case of toll roads require resolution in order to effectively manage funding for roads.
If the procurement laws are streamlined to curb corruption, quality checks are made compulsory in the execution of the projects and costs are kept to the minimum the continent may just see its infrastructure dreams realized.
(Reporting from Kenya )