Nigeria, others need more investments to bridge $93b infrastructure gap

AFRICA’S $93 billion estimated infrastructure dearth may have recorded exceptional growth since 2009 due to massive investment attempts, but Nigeria and other Africa countries need more investments to bridge the gap.

With several investment efforts which analyst reported to have been haunted by corruption, Nigeria alone still needs about$25 billion over the next four years to finance its infrastructure gap through public-private partnerships.

According to a report recently released by Brookings titled “Top five trends in the changing landscape of African infrastructure financing”, investments by local and international bodies is not enough to reach the estimated $93 billion gap in the continent’s infrastructure needs.

“In addition, while infrastructure financing has seen massive growth, until now we didn’t have an understanding of what that growth looks like”, Brooking experts said.

Last year the Federal Government of Nigeria unveiled a 30-year N485 trillion master plan tagged National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) expected to tackle infrastructure deficit in Nigeria and create millions of jobs for the teeming population through alliances with Africa Infrastructure Summit Group (AISG) and other key players in the public and private sectors.

The report, which hinted on fundamental issues about Africa infrastructure, noted that there are new trends in infrastructure financing in Africa.

It stated that there has been a major surge in external financing in the last decade, but that its composition looks much different currently.

It also revealed that by 2012, external financing commitments almost reached $30 billion up from only $5 billion in 2003, stressing that while infrastructure commitments have been growing from all major sources, private investment has particularly been taking off.

“Indeed, PPI accounts for 50 percent of infrastructure financing. Chinese financing has also seen significant growth since 2002, and now accounts for about 20 percent of external financing,” the report stated