‘Africa’s infrastructure needs require $93bn a year’

In order to build the infrastructure necessary to support growth and meet stated development goals, Africa will have to spend about $93 billion a year for a decade. Two-thirds of that sum would be for investments and the remaining third for maintenance. According to the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a knowledge programme on Africa’s infrastructure that grew out of a pledge by the G8 Summit of 2005, Africa spends only about $45 billion a year on infrastructure, two-thirds of which is domestically financed from taxes and user charges. “Africa trails other regions in infrastructure, and that lag suppresses growth and productivity. If sub-Saharan Africa could achieve the infrastructure development of Mauritius, annual GDP growth in the region would rise by more than two percentage points.”