GUEBEZA SAYS INVESTING IN INFRASTRUCTURE IS AN INVESTMENT IN PEACE

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza declared in Brussels last week that investing in transport, communications and energy infrastructures is not just a business opportunity, but also a guarantee of peace, security and well-being, since today’s world is characterised by a growing interdependence between states and continents.
Speaking during the Fourth European Union-Africa summit, Guebuza cited the example of the growth in railways, roads, ports, airports, telecommunications and electricity grids in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
But despite the significant advances that African countries have been making, the gap between the need for social and economic infrastructures and what has been achieved is enormous. According to the African Development Bank (ADB), the continent only invests annually in infrastructures four per cent of its Gross Domestic Product, while an ideal figure would be around 14 percent.
Nonetheless, Guebuza believed that, rather than regarding this simply as a constraint, African countries have been able to transform the current deficit in infrastructures into an opportunity to attract direct private investment, to complement the efforts made by the public sector.
“The response has been positive, both from national and foreign private investors, when they identify and recognise the potential to do business with a sure return on their investments”, said Guebuza.
Africa has been organising itself to articulate its needs in a structured and collective manner, he added, citing the ADB’s Africa 50 Infrastructure Fund, the African Union’s Plan for Infrastructure Development (PIDA), the NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative, and SADC’s infrastructure master plan.
One aspect common to all these programmes, said Guebuza, is their cross-border nature. They thus promote regional and continental integration and economies of scale.
Guebuza added that the participation of the private sector in this area contributes to reducing public debt, which has traditionally been used to finance infrastructures. This private participation, he claimed, has strengthened the business fabric of the countries concerned and stimulated other sectors of the economy. – AIM