By Duncan Miriri
NAIROBI, Feb 19 (Reuters) - The African Union is setting up
a fund to finance the construction of much-needed roads,
railways and power plants on the continent, its infrastructure
head said, turning to new sources of cash due to donor fatigue
and higher debt levels.
The continent has an estimated annual infrastructure
financing deficit of $60 billion-$90 billion, the AU says,
making it hard for the body to advance its goal of integrating
the disparate individual markets into a single, free trade area.
"Africa is financially starved as far as the need for
infrastructure development is concerned," Raila Odinga, who is
the AU's high representative for infrastructure, told Reuters.
The 55-nation AU is now turning to sovereign wealth funds,
insurance and retirement funds in countries like South Africa,
Angola, Nigeria Morocco, Egypt and Kenya, to raise the cash.
The funds will be invited to invest about 5% of their
holdings, Odinga said, "which is actually going to be more
lucrative for those institutions, rather than having funds lie
idle".
Talks with the funds are going on and the AU's experts are
setting up the legal and financial structure for the
infrastructure fund, which will be administered by the newly
formed African Union Development Agency, Odinga said.
The move bucks the past trend of dependence on wealthy donor
nations and borrowing from financial markets.
China, which has been one of the biggest funders of
infrastructure projects on the continent over the past decade,
has cut back on lending due to high debt levels among individual
nations like Kenya.
"We are now trying to think out of the box," Odinga said.
The drive to find new ways of funding the construction of
roads and railways and other utilities comes as Africa seeks to
bring together 1.3 billion people in a $3.4 trillion economic
bloc known as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
"This infrastructure is urgent for the realization of the
AfCFTA, otherwise it is just going to remain on paper," Odinga
said.
It was critical to connect landlocked nations to ports on
coastlines, and complete missing links for transcontinental
highways, to facilitate the free flow of goods under the AfCFTA
and lift people out of poverty, he said.
"Africa needs to trade with itself," Odinga said, citing
figures which show intra-African trade is just 15%, compared
with intra-European trade levels of 70% and 50% in Asia.
(Editing by Angus MacSwan)