Africa should press ahead with plans to develop its transport and energy networks despite a recent slowdown in GDP growth because better infrastructure is key to long-term development, the head of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, said on Friday.
To that end, governments need to maintain macro-economic stability to attract capital that remains willing to commit to the continent.
GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 is expected to stand at 3.7%, its lowest level since 2009 and lower than the average growth rate of the last two decades, according to World Bank figures.
The continent’s commodities producers, such as Ghana, have been especially hard hit by lower global prices and there is a real danger over-production, he said. At the same time, a surge in Africa’s population makes it imperative for countries to put their economies on a sound footing if they are going to absorb young people entering the labour market in the decades ahead.
“Right now we have to do everything we can to bring together the bankable (infrastructure) projects that even in a period of low growth will attract private investors,” Kim told Reuters.
He singled out hydro-electric power as an area of particular opportunity.
The Bank’s Global Infrastructure Facility aims to promote private-public partnerships to mobilise private sector and institutional investor capital for big projects.
