Elvira Morella

Africa's Water and Sanitation Infrastructure: Access, Affordability, and Alternatives

The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has produced continent-wide analysis of many aspects of Africas infrastructure challenge. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africas Infrastructure: a time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for policy makers, that report necessarily focused on the high-level conclusions. It attracted widespread media coverage feeding directly into discussions at the 2009 African Union Commission Heads of State Summit on Infrastructure. Although the flagship report served a valuable role in highlighting the main findings of the project, it could not do full justice to the richness of the data collected and technical analysis undertaken. There was clearly a need to make this more detailed material available to a wider audience of infrastructure practitioners. Hence the idea of producing four technical monographs, such as this one, to provide detailed results on each of the major infrastructure sectors, information and communication technologies (ICT), power, transport, and water, as companions to the flagship report. These technical volumes are intended as reference books on each of the infrastructure sectors. They cover all aspects of the AICD project relevant to each sector, including sector performance, gaps in financing and efficiency, and estimates of the need for additional spending on investment, operations, and maintenance. Each volume also comes with a detailed data appendix, providing easy access to all the relevant infrastructure indicators at the country level, which is a resource in and of itself.

Ethiopia's infrastructure: a continental perspective

Infrastructure contributed 0.6 percentage points to Ethiopias annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the last decade. Raising the countrys infrastructure endowment level to that of the regions middle-income countries could lift annual growth by an additional 3 percentage points. This will represent a significant boost over the growth performance of the mid-2000s, which averaged around 5 percent. The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has collected and analyzed extensive infrastructure data for more than 40 Sub-Saharan countries, including Ethiopia. The results are presented in reports on various infrastructure sectors Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), irrigation, power, transport, water and sanitation and policy areas, including investment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance. This country report presents the key AICD findings for Ethiopia. This will allow its infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of other African nations that, like Ethiopia, are low-income countries, with particular emphasis on immediate regional neighbors in East Africa. Several methodological issues should be borne in mind. First, the cross country nature of the data collection creates an inevitable time lag. The period covered by the AICD runs from 2001 to 2006. Most technical data are presented for 2006 (or the most recent year available), while financial data typically are averaged over the available period to smooth out the effect of short term fluctuations. Second, cross country comparisons require standardization of the indicators and the analysis to ensure consistency. Therefore, some of the indicators may be slightly different from those that are routinely reported and discussed at the country level. During the 2000s, Ethiopias annual economic growth has averaged 4.8 percent, compared with only 0.5 percent in the previous decade. Notwithstanding this improvement, current annual growth levels still fall short of the sustained 7 percent needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Improved structural and stabilization policies generated an estimated 4.2 percent of Ethiopias improved per capita growth performance during the 2000s, and improvements in the countrys infrastructure platform over that period contributed up to 0.6 percentage points to growth. This was due almost entirely to the introduction of mobile telephony in Ethiopia. Simulations suggest that if Ethiopias infrastructure platform could be improved to the level of the African leader, Mauritius, annual per capita growth rates could increase by 3.8 percent. This potential impact would come equally from improvements to transport, power, and ICT infrastructure.

Independent power projects in Sub-Saharan Africa : lessons from five key countries

The track record of Sub-Saharan Africa’s power sector is dismal. Two out of three households in Sub-Saharan Africa, close to 600 million people, have no electricity connection. The need for large investments in power generation capacity is obvious, especially in the face of robust economic growth on the continent, which has been the key driver of electricity demand over the last decade. The five case study countries, namely Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda were selected because they present the largest and most diversified experience with independent power projects (IPPs) over the longest time period. The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the experience of IPPs in Sub-Saharan Africa and explore how they may be improved. Lessons from past experiences and a review of best practices from the region and from around the world can greatly help countries attract more and better IPPs. As African countries strive to anchor investments from traditional and nontraditional financiers over the long term, a better understanding of the emerging trends in the financial landscape will help them make informed choices and effectively leverage investments and financial assistance. The report is organized in two parts: part one presents power generation in Sub-Saharan Africa and part two presents five country case studies.