African Union to set up infrastructure fund

DUNCAN MIRIRIThe African Union is setting up a fund to finance the construction of much-needed roads, railways and power plants on the continent, its infrastructure head said, turning to new sources of cash due to donor fatigue and higher debt levels.The continent has an estimated annual infrastructure financing deficit of US$60 billion to US$90 billion, the AU says, making it hard for the body to advance its goal of integrating the disparate individual markets into a single, free trade area."Africa is financially starved as far as the need for infrastructure development is concerned," Raila Odinga, who is the AU's high representative for infrastructure, told Reuters.The 55-nation AU is now turning to sovereign wealth funds, insurance and retirement funds in countries like South Africa, Angola, Nigeria Morocco, Egypt and Kenya, to raise the cash.The funds will be invited to invest about 5% of their holdings, Odinga said, "which is actually going to be more lucrative for those institutions, rather than having funds lie idle".FundsTalks with the funds are going on and the AU's experts are setting up the legal and financial structure for the infrastructure fund, which will be administered by the newly formed African Union Development Agency, Odinga said.The move bucks the past trend of dependence on wealthy donor nations and borrowing from financial markets.China, which has been one of the biggest funders of infrastructure projects on the continent over the past decade, has cut back on lending due to high debt levels among individual nations like Kenya.The drive to find new ways of funding the construction of roads and railways and other utilities comes as Africa seeks to bring together 1.3 billion people in a US$3.4 trillion economic bloc known as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). - Nampa/Reuters

African Union to set up infrastructure fund

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