A Regional Forum on
Cross-Border Transport Infrastructure in Africa opened last Thursday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with a call for efforts to implement infrastructure projects to promote intra-Africa trade.
Reports  say that the three-day Forum was convened by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
The forum which has the  theme “Boosting market integration and intra-Africa trade through effective management of regional transport infrastructure and services’’., noted the importance of trans-border infrastructure.
ECA’s Director of Regional Integration and Trade Division, Stephen Karingi, at the meeting’s opening, said Africa needed to hasten infrastructure development to address the challenges facing intra-Africa trade.
Karingi said infrastructure would help in reducing a greater percentage of the challenges facing Africa’s development and growth.
Data obtained by newsmen showed that only 30 per cent of Africans have access to adequate electricity, while only about three per cent have access to telecommunications services.
The data also showed that only 65 per cent of the people have access to adequate water supply, while road network across the continent stands at 34 per cent.
The statistics show that the continent’s accessibility to social services was too low, compared to similar emerging economies in the Americas and Asia.
The UN agency said Africa needed to step up efforts to optimise its infrastructure development through effective policy implementation for a faster economic growth of the continent.
“Infrastructure development will also be critical to achieving Africa’s vision for the next 50 years, commonly known as ‘Agenda 2063’.
“Its ongoing articulation is spearheaded by the African Union (AU) Commission in collaboration with ECA and the African Development Bank (AfDB).’’
Karingi said ECA was concerned by challenges and cost of doing business in some landlocked African countries, especially in the area of inland transportation.
He said the cost of doing business was higher in Botswana, Burundi, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe because “inland transport cost was as high as 70 per cent of the total import/export costs’’.
“We know that Africa’s per capita economic growth can increase by two per cent a year and the productivity of its firms by as much as 40 per cent by closing the continent’s infrastructure gap.’’
ECA, however, expressed concern on the slow pace of implementation of the NEPAD Infrastructure Short Term Action Plan and the recent Programme for Infrastructure in Africa (PIDA).
Only about 15 per cent of the NEPAD programmes had been implemented.
NAN reports that the forum is expected to evolve a regional transport infrastructure monitoring and evaluation network.
This will create a database to feed into the Geographic Information System (GIS) being developed by the UN agency.