Last week, my fellow members of the Africa Progress Panel and I joined president Nicolas Sarkozy of France at a meeting on what the G20 can do for Africa.
Our argument was simple: the G20 – which represents the richest nations on earth – can and should do a great deal for Africa, particularly in the area of infrastructure development.
Lack of sufficient and reliable infrastructure continues to weigh heavily among Africa’s many problems. Anyone trying to do business in Africa will tell you of their daily struggles with the continent’s deficient energy, transport and communication networks.
The lack of a dependable electricity supply hampers production, the absence of good roads slows transport, and insufficient access to modern technology limits industrialisation and integration into the global marketplace.
The resultant inefficiencies make Africa the most difficult and expensive place in which to do business; they also slow economic growth and frustrate general development.
However, the pivotal importance of infrastructure is becoming better understood in the continent. African leaders have agreed several plans and initiatives to close Africa’s infrastructure gap.
The African Development Bank is now spending more on infrastructure than any other aspect of development, and there is increasing regional co-operation on cross-border projects such as the trans-Africa highway and the West African Power Pool.
Africa’s partners, too, have recognised the need to prioritise infrastructure development on the continent.
As a result, they have created a vast array of policy instruments and initiatives, including the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa and the EU-Africa Partnership on Infrastructure. These initiatives are intended to co-ordinate and bundle assistance, and to channel private-sector investments into key projects.
However, despite the flurry of activism and proliferation of initiatives, we are still far from finding the $93-billion a year the World Bank believes is necessary to bridge Africa’s infrastructure gap.
Given the urgency, calls for a more comprehensive approach linking the various continuous efforts and creating synergy between them have become louder – and rightly so.
The G20’s multi-year action plan on development may just offer such an approach. Born of the group’s Seoul Consensus, it defines infrastructure as one of nine development priorities and seeks to build on the momentum created by existing initiatives to develop project pipelines, improve capacities and facilitate additional investments.
In practice, the plan calls for the formulation of comprehensive infrastructure action plans by the multilateral development banks. It suggests the creation of a high-level panel to look into ways to harness large-scale investments continentally in infrastructure.
The pressure is now on the French G20 presidency, which has to translate the plan into purposeful action by November 2011 and avoid the pitfalls of past efforts – which include short-term thinking, destabilising capital surges, and carbon-heavy construction.
Success will be measured by the amount of capital generated, and the number of projects realised, as well as by the extent to which G20 activities complement and synergise existing efforts without supplanting or fragmenting them.
With the creation of the high-level panel, which is to be chaired by Africa Progress Panel member and businessman, Tidjane Thiam, Sarkozy has taken a step in the right direction – but many more must follow.
The multi-year action plan shows the way.
Obasanjo is a former president of Nigeria and member of the Africa Progress Panel. For more, see www.africaprogresspanel.org
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s the Secretary-General outlined for the continent to address included climate change, desertification and democratic backsliding, as well as continued armed conflict and sexual violence against women.
