Industrialization and trade

As long as Africa continues to export primary commodities and source its raw materials from outside Africa, Africas transportation systems will remain outward oriented and sea bound rather than inward oriented and hinterland bound. For the current trend to be reserved, Africas industrial and trade patterns must undergo dramatic transformation. African Business
quoting UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development Organization,
indicates that at billion, Africa accounts for less than one percent of the worlds Manufacturing Value Added MVA. Compare this with percent for Latin America, percent for Asia excluding China, percent for North America and 31 percent for Western Europe.

Africas MVA is one fourth of the United Kingdom, one eighth of Germany’s and only percent of the USAs. Thus, Africas infrastructure strategies cannot be viewed in isolation from industrialization and trade policies as well as other broader macro economic policies. An Integrated Cross Sectoral Approach is required to deal with Africas Infrastructure Revitalization and Repositioning. This requires the setting up of goal oriented, multi sectoral and multi disciplinary teams to define and facilitate the implementation of targeted and specific interventions to promote and improve regional infrastructure linkages in Africa.

It must be recognized that the private sector alone cannot address all the requirements of Africas regional infrastructure even if all the conditions were in place. In some cases, viability will only be realized if the basic infrastructure is put in place to stimulate production and or trade. In yet others, the state of the infrastructure to be privatized is in such poor state that some investment is required to bring the assets to a level where it becomes attractive to the private sector. Thus, some strategic interventions and investments by governments will be necessary to spur Africas infrastructure linkages alongside the private sector. Partnerships between the public and private sector are therefore both necessary and inevitable.