July 2, 2007
African public and private investors
plan to finance highways, hydro-power
dams and other infrastructure through
a continent-wide fund that puts hard
cash behind the goal of a more united
Africa.
African ministers officially launched
the Pan African Infrastructure
Development Fund late on Sunday at an
African Union summit in Ghana that is
debating how to speed up integration
of the world's poorest continent.
"This is a fund by Africans for
the benefit of Africans," South
African Foreign Minister Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma said.
Her Ghanaian counterpart, Nana Akufo
Addo, said the home-grown initiative
was a break from the tradition of
African states "holding their
hands out for alms" from the
world.
The fund's chief executive, Tshepo
Mahloele, said mostly South African
public and private investors,
including banks and pension funds, had
already committed $625-million to the
first long-term equity fund of its
kind in Africa.
"The goal of the fund is to raise
$1,2-billion," he added.
The initiative would provide long-term
financing for cross-border energy,
transport, telecoms, water and
sanitation projects.
Other investment instruments --
quasi-equity, structured finance and
high-yielding debt -- would be
considered.
The fund, whose start-up investors
include the South African
government-owned Public Investment
Corporation (PIC) and Ghana's Social
Security and National Insurance Trust
(SSNIT), was now looking for more
investors and financing partners
inside and outside the continent.
International interest
"We've got a lot of international
interest. We've got the Singaporean
pension funds looking, we've scheduled
engagements with American
institutions, and also some of the
regular development finance
institutions," he said.
"We have set ourselves the next
12 months to get to the
$1,2-billion," Mahloele added,
saying the funds had made a point of
obtaining its initial commitments from
African institutions.
"It is unlikely that we will get
anyone to invest on the continent
unless Africans start investing
themselves," he said.
Pipeline of projects
Mahloele said the fund, which was
based in South Africa but would open
offices in the main geographical
regions of the continent, had more
than 19 possible infrastructure deals
in the pipeline.
Some of the projects under
consideration included an airport in
West Africa, a toll road in Nigeria, a
gas scheme in Namibia, a satellite
covering the whole of Sub-Saharan
Africa and investment in the massive
Inga hydro-electric dam in the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
"Of our five top projects, what
we call our A list, we're sure that we
should be able to close two within the
next 12 to 18 months," Mahloele
said.
Countries such as Namibia, Kenya,
Nigeria, Botswana and Tanzania, were
looking at amending their legislation
and regulations to allow national
pension funds to invest abroad so they
could join the initiative.
Mahloele said the time was ripe for
the launch of such an investment
vehicle, allowing African pension
funds to invest resources on their own
continent and contribute to easing the
region's huge infrastructure deficit,
which was hampering development.
Mugabe on Africa
Zimbabwe's leader Robert Mugabe, under
fire at home over a crumbling economy,
said on Sunday that Africa needed to
get its act together and warned that
no amount of external aid would lift
it out of its quagmire.
"To tell you the truth, until and
unless we put our act together,
organise and start pulling our
resources together, we will never ever
prosper from any aid from any source
outside Africa," he told a rally
on the fringes of the summit.
About a thousand placard and flag
waving Ghananians, many sporting
T-shirts with the portrait of the
83-year old Mugabe, attended the rally
at Kwameh Nkrumah Memorial Park in the
Ghanian capital.
"We must unite, not just
politically but economically," he
told a cheering crowd in the city
hosting a twice yearly meeting of
African heads of state.
"Although there is the umbrella
of unity, but within this unity we are
not united," he said.
|
