ISS Seminar, Pretoria: The Future of African Infrastructure

Date: 2011-10-11

Venue: , ISS Conference Room, Block C, Brooklyn Court, 361 Veale Street, New Muckleneuk

RSVP:
Sarah Malefo
Tel: 012 346 9500
Fax: 012 460 0997

Lack of adequate and quality infrastructure is affecting the economic prosperity and wellbeing of people across Africa. Recent studies show that the absence of good infrastructure is costing the continent in terms of lost potential economic growth. Under a business as usual scenario, this reduction in growth is also making the meeting of social targets like halving the number of people without access to sanitation and safe drinking water by 2015 look far off at best.

Financial constraints, geographic conditions and demographic characteristics all make infrastructure provision challenging in the region, and corruption and incompetence adds to these costs. Conflict prone countries are also seeing an erosion in their existing infrastructure.

One of the major bottlenecks in providing infrastructure in the region is a lack of funding. While investing in infrastructure is likely to pay for itself in the long run, most African countries lack the resources to pursue a big push (like China has in recent years, or even anything close) by themselves. External funding, increased revenue generation, public-private partnership and prioritizing key sectors like power over others are all possible pathways towards solving Africa`s infrastructure problems.

In this seminar we will present estimates on the next fifty years of infrastructure demand in Africa, both by country and sub-region, for various infrastructure types like roads, power, ICT, safe water and sanitation, and irrigation. We will then discuss the funding needed to keep up with forecasted demand under alternative infrastructure scenarios (base case and targeted), and the economic and social benefits of meeting these demands in each case.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Paul-Simon Handy, Director Research, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, South Africa

KEY SPEAKER: Mr Mohammod T. Irfan,Research Rellow, Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at University of Denver, Colorado USA

RESPONDANT: Dr Genevesi Ogiogio, Special Advisor to the CEO on Capacity Development, NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency