Abdelmonem Fawzi
Elders in our continent have taught us that good men do not steal what belongs to others.
Nonetheless, we are being robbed since the beginning of time and civilisation. African empires were invaded, African civilisations destroyed, African legacy stolen and African mineral and natural resources usurped so that they can be used in the building of other nations.
Our kith and kin were forcibly taken out of their cultural environment over the years.
We forced to forget our own values and adopt imperialist values that did nothing but degrade our humanity and our civilisation.
We do not know which way to turn when it comes to pressing international issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic. We suffer insecurity, while the enormous human and natural resources of our continent are being stolen and exploited.
We need to raise the bar and begin to think like our founding fathers.
The good news is that our eyes are open now, but the robbers’ agents continue to hang around. Africa will, no doubt, reclaim its rights.
We need to put our continent on a firm footing for recovery, growth, and resilience through infrastructure.
This is what the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) is all about.
The programme is the strategic framework for infrastructure development, guiding the African Union’s infrastructure development agenda, policies, and investment priorities.
It provides a framework for engagement with Africa’s development partners on the provision of regional and continental infrastructure, and facilitates the physical, economic and social integration of the continent in support of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
PIDA brings together continental infrastructure initiatives and regional master plans into one coherent infrastructure investment programme with an implementation strategy and portfolio of projects for prioritised implementation, through PIDA Priority Action Plan (PIDA- PAP).
PIDA- PAP covers the four key infrastructure sectors of transport, energy, ICT and Transboundary Water Resources.
It provides a platform to advocate, mobilise and market projects as part of the PIDA communications strategy. It also facilitates the sharing of lessons and experiences on the implementation of PIDA projects.
The programme also brings together partners to engage in partnerships on building and sustaining resilience in Africa through infrastructure, and engages stakeholders and partners on critical discourse around practical approaches to the realisation of PIDA projects.
The 7th PIDA Week 2021 will be a hybrid virtual and physical event. It will adopt the slogan ‘Putting Africa on a firm footing for recovery, growth, and resilience through Infrastructure’.
The 7th PIDA Week is set to take place between February 28 and March 4 in the beautiful city of Nairobi.
It will discuss the delivery of quality, climate-friendly, and gender-responsive infrastructure in Africa.
However, African economies are growing rapidly, capitalising on new resource discoveries, urbanisation, a youthful population, deepening regional integration arrangements and the increased integration of the continent into the global economy.
These developments require sound and versatile infrastructure and the enabling environment for the infrastructure systems to perform efficiently and optimally.
PIDA identifies priority continental projects in the fields of water, energy, transport and ICT and seeks to realise them by 2040. When implemented, these projects will have the greatest transformational impact on the continent. They will also catalyse further infrastructure investments, open up important trade routes for landlocked countries, dramatically increase access to improved transport, electricity, ICT, and water services, and support other economic activities.
The total estimated investment cost of these projects is $360 billion, or around $9 billion per year, which is less than 1% of Africa’s GDP.
The problem is that Africa lags behind the rest of the world in covering key infrastructure classes, including energy, road and rail transportation, and water infrastructure.
Taking electricity as an example, entire communities across large swathes of the continent lack any connection to the grid. For households and businesses alike, work-arounds are expensive.
By some measures, generator-based power in sub-Saharan Africa costs three to six times what grid consumers pay across the world.
Even those who do have electricity generally, use very little of it. In Mali, for example, the average person uses less electricity in a year overall than a Londoner uses just to power their tea kettle.
Closing this infrastructure gap matters greatly for the continent’s economic development, for the quality of life of its people, and for the growth of its business sector.
The good news is that infrastructure investment in Africa has been increasing steadily over the past 15 years. International investors also have both the appetite and the funds to spend much more across the continent.
The challenge, however, is that Africa’s track record in moving projects to a financial close is poor. Around 80 per cent of infrastructure projects fail at the feasibility and business-plan stage.
This is Africa’s infrastructure paradox – there is need and availability of funding, together with a large pipeline of potential projects, but still not enough money is being spent.
Discussion about this post