APA – Dakar (Senegal) At June 30, 2023, the African Development Bank (AfDB) assures that its active portfolio in South Africa includes 23 projects for a total financing of $7 billion.
The African Development Bank (ADB) will be concentrating its efforts on the 2023-2028 Country Strategy Paper (CSP) for South Africa. After approving it on Tuesday 24 October in Abidjan, the pan-African bank said in a press release received by APA that it will focus its interventions on two priority areas.
These include improving governance and developing the private sector in Southern Africa’s largest and most populous country.
The 2023-2028 CSP aims to “support the South African government in its efforts to address its structural challenges, promote its industrialisation and set a more inclusive and accelerated growth trajectory with a view to reducing poverty in a sustainable way.
Its indicative operational programme amounts to $1.54 billion, comprising six sovereign operations worth USD 887 million and seven non-sovereign operations valued at $654 million, explains the AfDB, which plans in particular to reduce “the budget deficit from 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2022-2023 to 3 percent in 2027-2028.”
Having already financed 23 projects worth seven billion dollars in the country, the banking institution intends to take further action to ensure that energy production by the private sector rises from 100 megawatts in 2023 to more than one gigawatt in 2028, while an additional 700 new SMEs should have access to financing, including at least 210 SMEs owned by women and 70 by young people, between now and 2028.
Under the second priority, private sector development, the Bank intends to work to create “favourable conditions” for the implementation of quality infrastructure projects. Its actions should also help to “raise productivity and strengthen competition in order to promote private sector-led growth and job creation through transformative projects.”
It explains that its interventions will be directed towards the energy, transport, water and sanitation sectors, insofar as improving these infrastructures will help to reduce the cost of economic activity, increase productivity and, above all, give women access to basic services and economic opportunities.
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