President Uhuru Kenyatta has urged African to governments to create an enabling environment to enable the private sector to participate more in the development of critical infrastructure in Africa.
Kenyatta said he was convinced that public private partnerships supported by robust national institutions to ensure accountability and transparency holds the key to closing the prevailing infrastructure gap on the continent.
He pointed out that Africa must work to address the insufficient stock of functional and quality infrastructure in energy, water and transport services to enable companies to produce competitively for both domestic and international markets.
He said, good infrastructure is the backbone upon which African nations will achieve economic growth that will inturn create the much needed jobs for the youth as well as generate wealth to deal with the challenge of poverty.
“High quality infrastructure reduces transnational and other costs; enabling efficient use of labour and capital, but more importantly, enhancing connectivity between production points and market points,” Kenyatta said.
The President was speaking when he officially closed the inaugural AfroChampions Boma forum on African Infrastructure Financing and Delivery organized by the AfroChampions Initiative.
The AfroChampions Initiative is a set of innovative public-private partnerships and flagship programs designed to galvanize African resources and institutions to support the emergence and success of African private sector in the regional and global spheres.
The initiative is driven by prominent private and public sector players in Africa.
Kenyatta said the dream of connecting the continent cannot be realized unless viable solutions to mobilise the required infrastructure financing are found.
“We need to connect Africa, but this cannot be possible without investing in critical infrastructure,” he said, adding that African economies must also be diversified by promoting value addition and manufacturing to create job opportunities for the more than ten million young people joining the labour market each year.
JK/as/APA