Dec 28, 2015 | News

“Africa has endless infrastructure investment opportunities” – Dr Dlamini-Zuma

Cape Town, May 7, 2013 - A high-level Summit on Africa’s infrastructure development has been discussing how the African Union (AU) and its technical body the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) can maximise domestic resource mobilisation through the private sector, for infrastructural development in Africa.

This years’ Africa Investor (Ai) Infrastructure Investor Summit in Cape Town, organised in partnership with NEPAD ahead of the 23rd World Economic Forum(WEF) on Africa, is an annual event that provides decision-makers involved in infrastructure development and investment with an opportunity to explore new trading opportunities and business partnerships across the continent.

African Union Commission Chairperson Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma emphasised on the AU’s strong interest in mobilising more African capital to invest in African infrastructure, so as to close the continent’s infrastructure investment gap.

It is for this reason that an infrastructure task team was set-up led by NEPAD Chief Executive Officer Dr Ibrahim Mayaki to deal with the issue of “improved regional integration, intra-African investment and finding alternative resource for infrastructure development funding”, Dr Dlamini-Zuma said.

Dr Dlamini-Zuma called on the private sector to come up with solutions on how to drive domestic infrastructure investment in partnership with African governments. “The continent’s opportunities are endless, but we need to work together to catch these opportunities,” she said.

The Forum called on support from all sectors for important initiatives such as the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), which is Africa’s main infrastructure development programme. PIDA aims to accelerate the delivery of Africa’s current and future regional and continental infrastructure projects in transport, energy, information and telecommunications technologies, as well as trans-boundary waterways.

NEPAD’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Ibrahim Mayaki said PIDA has made a huge impact on the continent in driving regional integration and economic growth through fifty-one priority programmes and projects – among them -  the Optic Fibre Cable connecting Algeria via Niger to Nigeria and the Trans-Sahara Highway closing the missing link from Algeria to Niger, championed by the Government of Algeria.image

“Eighty-five per cent of infrastructure funding has been public. In order to fill this gap, we have to open ourselves to Public Private Partnerships. The implementation, however, is mainly a political issue. If you have political leadership, you also increase the effective implementation of PIDA projects,” said Dr Mayaki.

AU Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, Elham Mahmoud Ahmed Ibrahim, added that for this reason the Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative was established, to ensure the efficient implementation of eight high priority PIDA projects through political leadership. 

At the end of the Summit, participants agreed on the need to find ways to attract African infrastructure investment through political commitment, effective financing mechanisms and policy environment, improved access to information, transparency and human capacity building.

Over 1 000 global business, government and academic leaders have converge on Cape Town this week to focus on driving Africa's economic growth, boosting strategic infrastructure and unlocking the continent's talent as part of the WEF Meeting.


For more information:

Maureen Nkandu

Phone: + 27 837044502

E-mail: maureenn@nepad.org

 

Abiola Ajayi

Phone: + 27 767461272

E-mail: abiolaa@nepad.org