More than half of the projects of the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (Pida) in its phase 2 are still in the drawers of the initiators. A major constraint for Africa, which is trying to fill its glaring infrastructure gap. The Dakar 2 Summit on infrastructure financing in Africa (Fds 2) aims to meet the challenges by bringing to the table for discussion, 20 priority projects that will serve as case studies, in order to interest investors in dormant issues.
More than half of the priority projects of the second phase of the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (Pida) are struggling to find investors. President Macky Sall, who made this known yesterday in his inaugural speech at the Summit on Infrastructure Financing in Africa (Fds 2), which is being held at the Cicad in Diamniadio, hopes that Dakar 2 will make it possible to remedy this, by allowing everyone to take an example of the 20 projects that will be presented.« Sixty-one percent of the 69 projects of the 2nd Pida Priority Action Plan have not yet been the subject of feasibility studies to be likely to attract private investors, » noted Macky Sall. “Synergy should be created between multilateral development banks, technical and financial partners, and the Nepad Project Preparation Fund, to improve feasibility studies for priority projects,” he pleaded.
Wanting optimism through the summit. « I hope that the presentation of the 20 projects selected within the framework of the boardroom sessions will be able to serve as a case study to help remove the obstacles at these different stages, » and highlighted the need to take up the challenges of planning and technical and financial engineering of projects to make them bankable. Beyond these considerations, the current president of the African Union (AU) has put on the table otherfactors blocking the construction of infrastructure.
Among these, the abusive ratings of certain evaluation agencies and the overvalued perception of the risk of investing in Africa always higher than the real risk. « In Africa, infrastructure is still underfunded in volume and poorly funded in terms of interest rates and repayment terms, » said President Sall, assuring that for the year 2020, infrastructure funding in Africa brought, according to the figures of the annual report of the Consortium for infrastructure in Africa, a total of 81 billion US dollars. “Africa has always paid dearly for its projects, because of high interest rates.
In addition, for such heavy financing and long-term infrastructure, our countries are often required to repay their debts in often short periods, with a few exceptions,” he noted as another blocking factor. « The problem of financing will remain intact as long as the rules and practices of global economic and financial governance persist, which hinder the access of our countries to substantial resources, and under sustainable conditions, » he further noted, urging continental leaders to continue advocacy to reverse the trend. “Despite our structural difficulties and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Africa is under construction,” believes Macky Sall, listing in this regard, several projects in his country and in others of the continent. It will thus be for him, through the Dakar 2 Summit, a synergy of the stakeholders in Pida 2 to meet the challenges faced with the glaring lack of infrastructure for Africa.
For Paul Kagame, president of the Nepad Organizing Committee, succeeding in the infrastructure challenge means reducing the cost of doing business, boosting regional trade and becoming more resilient to future shocks. Dakar 2 is, according to him, an opportunity to forge partnerships with the private sector. To ensure that infrastructure projects are bankable, the Rwandan President said partnerships are necessary. Aimene Benabderrahmane, Prime Minister of Algeria, and his Egyptian counterpart, Mostafa Madbouly, the President of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, and several personalities are taking part in the « Maintaining the momentum towards world-class infrastructure in Africa.”
By Alioune Badara NDIAYE / abndiaye@lequotidien.sn
- Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH