From infrastructure to industrialisation: Building Africa's next bridge to economic integration
For more than two decades, Africa has poured political capital, financial resources and institutional energy into connecting the continent - and the results are visible in roads, railways, transmission lines, bridges and border facilities across the map. That foundation is real, and it is substantial. The opportunity before us now is to make every one of those assets deliver its full promise.
The next generation of African infrastructure delivery will be defined not only by how much capital we mobilise, but by how effectively we align the institutions, regulations, standards and operating systems on either side of our borders. That alignment is the next bridge to build - and it is well within our reach.
NEPAD was created twenty-five years ago around a fundamental recognition: there are things no African state can build effectively on its own. A regional power pool cannot stop at a national border. A trade corridor cannot function if the road ends in a queue. A railway connecting markets cannot operate efficiently if standards change every time the train crosses a frontier. That logic drove the creation of NEPAD in 2001, and later the Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative in 2010, PIDA PAP 1 in 2012 and PIDA PAP 2 in 2021. Today, PAP 2 holds 69 priority projects with capital expenditure estimated at roughly US$160.8 billion. As we begin its mid-term review, the task is not merely to ask whether the original ambition was correct, but what twenty-five years of implementation have taught us about what actually makes projects move.
Originally published by African Business.