Towards Better Infrastructure: Conditions, Constraints, and Opportunities in Financing Public-Private Partnerships
Examining innovative ways to address Africa’s infrastructure deficit is at the heart of this analysis. Africa’s infrastructure stock and quality is among the least developed in the world, a challenge that significantly hinders economic development. The finance required to raise infrastructure in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) to a reasonable level within the next decade is estimated at US$93 billion per year, with two-thirds of this amount needed for capital expenditures. With the existing spending on infrastructure estimated at US$45 billion per annum and after accounting for potential efficiency gains that could amount to US$17 billion, Africa’s infrastructure funding gap remains around US$31 billion a year. One approach to address this challenge is to facilitate the increase of private provision of public infrastructure services through public-private partnerships (PPPs). This approach, which is a relatively new arrangement in SSA, is multifaceted and requires strong consensus and collaboration across both public and private sectors.