Africa Needs $108B Yearly To Close Infrastructure Gap –Adesina

Africa Needs $108B Yearly To Close Infrastructure Gap –Adesina
Dr Akinwumi Adesina
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The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina has stated that Africa is currently facing a gap in infrastructure financing gap of between 68 billion dollars to 108 billion dollars annually pointing out that a lot needs to be done to position the continent’s economy.

The Bank pointed this out in a statement obtained from its website by Africa Daily News, New York on Friday.

The statement disclosed that the President of the AfDB Group, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, made this known when the Secretary of the United States Treasury, Janet Yellen hosted G-7 ministers and heads of multilateral development banks earlier in the week.

Adesina explained that the Bank, which was the premier financier of infrastructure in Africa, had committed at least 44 billion dollars to infrastructure across the continent in the last six years.

Read Also: AfDB Approves Loans of $180mn In Rwanda

His words; ‘The 44 billion dollars was channelled toward developing critical areas like transportation, energy, water, and sanitation on the continent.

‘I propose eight solutions to bridge Africa’s infrastructure finance gap, which includes project preparation and mobilising institutional investors.

“Other solutions are improving public financing for infrastructure, mobilising financing for green infrastructure, attracting the private sector, and dealing with risks, among others,’ he said.

The AfDB chief further noted that institutional investors which includes pension funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and insurance companies held enough resources to scale up infrastructure financing from billions to trillions of dollars.

Adesina submitted that collectively, the institutions with commercial banks held 103 trillion dollars of assets under management.

‘This pool of capital is so vast that what is needed is only 0.03 per cent or up to 0.04 per cent to bridge the infrastructure financing gap for Africa.

‘Multilateral development banks should take early-stage investment risks in the project development phase’, he said.

He called on governments to focus more on attracting the private sector to infrastructure financing.

According to him, governments must improve the policy, legal, and regulatory environment to support Public-Private Partnership (PPP) investments in infrastructure.

He said the Bank’s board had also given its approval to a new PPP framework for financing infrastructure.

Africa Daily News, New York

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