Author/s: Cecilia Briceño-G., Karlis Smits, and Vivien Foster
Public spending for infrastructure in Africa falls far short of the amounts needed. But more resources can be made available be reallocating spending, fully executing budgets, spending more on maintenance, and cutting operating losses and inefficiencies.
To plan investments in infrastructure, governments must know—in detail—how much those investments will cost and how costs are determined. A new database of unit costs of infrastructure projects in Sub-Saharan Africa provides the needed foundation.
Huge investments are needed if Africa’s power sector is to keep up with economic development and population growth. Regionally traded hydropower may be the best way to cut costs while protecting against oil price increases and curbing emissions.
Data for power plants with total installed generating capacity > 10 mw. Data from the Platts World Electric Power Plants Database were georeferenced using auxiliary GIS datasets, documents and maps from national utilities, regional power pools and the World Bank.
Author/s: Rebecca Mayer, Ken Figueredo, Mike Jensen, Tim Kelly, Richard Green, and Alvaro Federico Barra
Large investments will be made in coming years to meet demand for telecommunications in Africa, but they will not yield universal coverage. This study reveals what private markets can be expected to finance and what will be left to the public sector.