NAN-HE-26
Growth
By Lucy Nwachukwu/Racheal Ishaya
Abuja, May 16, 2017 (NAN) Mr Andrew Alli, President, African Finance Corporation(AFC), has urged African governments to address impediments to sustainable and inclusive domestic growth in Africa.
Alli said this at the Infrastructure Investment Summit of the African Finance Corporation on Tuesday in Abuja.
According to him, the heart of addressing the impediments to growth is by addressing the infrastructure deficit in Africa.
“Africa needs to find ways of enabling infrastructure development if it is to reach its fullest economic potential.
“ If we are to achieve this, the public and private sector will need to work in unism.
“We believe that we must share our experience , intensify our efforts and focus on practical solutions that we can scale to address the challenge Africa infrastructure represents.
“Global economic condition has demonstrated the vulnerability of many African countries
“Many African countries have not done enough to create an enabling environment or make investment to foster the growth of diversified economy.
“This is obvious by the fact that the GDP growth did not always translate into inclusive social development.
“As a result, the infrastructure challenge that we (AFC) set out addressing in 2007 might be even more important now than it was then,’’ he said.
According to Alli, AFC has contributed to the alleviation of African infrastructure which has resulted in more industries entering the market than was the case at AFC’s inception in 2007.
He explained that the success of AFC was built on three pillars; a very strong capital base, a strong and committed team and a very strong corporate governance structure.
“We have invested over 2.5 billion dollars in projects in various countries across Africa and have raised over 3.5 billion dollars in capital.
“We have expanded our geographic footprint with 40 member countries now and as mentioned, we have invested over 4m billion dollars over the life of the corporation in projects in about 30 markets.
“We have established our first platform company focused on the power sector; we have continued to focus on project development as a core activity.
“We have also diversified and strengthened the advisory practice to provide advisory services to companies, institutions and governments among others.
He urged Africans to focus on bankable and sustainable projects to ensure capital to its infrastructure projects.
He said the roles of AFC were to accelerate the number of viable bankable projects across the continent, create market for capital and ultimately breach the investment divide that currently existed in Africa.
On currency, Alli said the commodity price issues of 2015/16 had thought the corporation that the dollar denominated financing in emerging markets created risk which acted as a major obstacle to financing projects.
“We believe that much more must be done to develop local currency financing solution. Longer term and cheaper capital need to be available domestically.
“Clearly, we cannot deliver this on our own but it is fundamental and something that we should all be working together to address
“We will be making this as core focus over the next few years,’’ he said.
He said that AFC had been and would continue to deliver real change on the continent by improving the power output, building road for trades and providing other needed infrastructure.
He said,“ the legacy we leave is not only fiscal but human capacity, social economic change it has driven, communities it has enriched, partnerships, footprint and social dividend”.(NAN)
LCN/RI/IA
(Edited by Idris Abdulrahman)