EGYPT’s high-level participation in the worth of the Financing Summit for Africa’s Infrastructure Development (DFS-2) that the Senegalese capital hosted on Feb. 2-3 reflects the country’s consistent policy of stressing the centrality of infrastructure in moves to achieve sustainable development – one of Africa’s common goals. Emphasis on this role emanates from the consideration that infrastructure development entails facilitating economic integration and opening up increasingly huge opportunities for the flow of investments. And it was this consideration that explains the launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) at an extraordinary summit that convened in Niamey in 2019 during Egypt’s presidency of the African Union. In a statement on behalf of President Sisi to the Dakar summit last Thursday, Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli highlighted the importance of joint action in the development of the continent’s infrastructure, referencing in this connection to Egypt’s own experience especially in the energy, transport, industrial and agricultural fields of infrastructure development.
Over the past eight years, Egypt, as he noted, has managed through infrastructure upgrading to build a chain of new cities, attract investments and generate new job opportunities for millions of young people; hence the importance of sharing such expertise at the continental level, citing in this context the Julius Nyerere Hydroelectric Power Project (JNHPP), jointly constructed by Egyptian and Tanzanian hands to boost Tanzania’s energy and agricultural sector of the infrastructure. As such, the project stands as a model for co-operation for development between African countries. With a wide-based free trade arrangement as AfCFTA, the prospects for larger continental integration prospects imply promising and mutually rewarding opportunities, including through the participation of the private sector. By all standards, Africa enjoys the availability of several key ingredients of the growth of effective partnerships for infrastructure development which is an essential contributor to the achievement of sustainable development as envisaged under Africa’s Vision 2063 as well in line of the UN endorsed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In both political and economic perspectives, upgrading Africa’s development infrastructure at the continental level is a multi-faceted drive given the continent’s vast area, large number of African countries and huge population of more than 3 billion people; hence the need for mobilising resources and international support in what President Sisi described, in remarks on the sidelines of the US-African summit that met in Washington in December last year, as a grand vision for infrastructure development. Convened under the theme of Maintaining the Momentum towards World-class Infrastructure in Africa”, last week’s Dakar summit has contributed to highlighting the role of public-private partnership in infrastructure development and the need to accelerate the implementation of the continent’s programme of action for infrastructure development. Under the circumstances, accelerating this process implies a potential to enable Africa to expedite recovery from the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic and the recent global food and energy crises, in addition to elevating the continent’s capability to deal with the effects of global climate change.
