Currently, Africa is the least-integrated continent physically and economically; intra-African imports accounted for only 17 percent of Africa’s total imports in 2022, and Africa’s share of total global exports was only 3 percent in 2021. Africa’s mounting infrastructure deficit has been frustrating integration efforts and stunting growth estimated at 2% per annum and diminishing business opportunities by 40%. Experiences from elsewhere in the world demonstrate that infrastructure, in both hard and soft forms, facilitates regional integration.
The gap in integration in Africa is seen as the link between regional integration efforts like the AfCFTA and the missing link of Africa’s regional transport and infrastructure which has created physical disconnects and barriers between countries and regions. Africa places prime focus on infrastructure development as a key enabler for stimulating and promoting regional integration, trade and economic transformation.
AU Agenda 2063 focus on Regional Integration
African Union Agenda 2063 Aspiration 2 on an Integrated Continent, Goal 10 on World Class Infrastructure Crisscrosses Africa sets out to strengthen regional integration in the continent. AU Agenda 2063 evaluation Report number 2 (2023) notes that Aspiration 2 has been fairly implemented due to high achievement rates in African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and financial integration. The report however flags out dismal performance on goal 10 on world class infrastructure across the continent at 8% rate during the first decade (2013 – 2023) AU Agenda 2063 implementation period.
At the onset of AU Agenda 2063 in 2012, a Program for Infrastructure for Africa (PIDA) was launched with a project basket of 52 infrastructure projects with an implementation timeline of 2040. The program planned to deliver 37,000 km of Modern Highways 30,200 km Modern Railways 1.3 billion tons added capacity to Port, 61,000 MW of Hydroelectric power, 16,500 km Interconnecting power lines, 20,000 M MCU of New water storage capacity and 8-10 Terabits Interconnecting ICT bandwidth by the year 2040.
AU Agenda 2063 evaluation Report No. 2 of 2023 shows that performance on the implementation of the Trans-African Highways and the Missing Links and on the High-Speed Rail Network stood at a low of 15% and 10% respectively. Africa however performed very well in other regards: commitment of Member States to join and implement all the measures of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) – 80% of 2021 expected values, the number of megawatts added to the national grid (193% of 2021 expected values), and the proportion of the population using mobile phones (91% of 2021 expected values).
Commitments to infrastructure totaled more than US$ 10 billion in the last six years alone – with most of the financing going to transport, energy, finance, ICT. AfDB supported Road infrastructure projects have constructed or rehabilitated over 10,000 km of roads during 2015 – 2020. Altogether these investments provided 69 million Africans with improved access to transport.
ACTIRI as a continental think tank is well positioned to contribute significantly to the improvement of policy environment for regional integration in the continent.