7th PIDA Week focuses on plans for infrastructure development in Africa

The 7th PIDA Week started on 28 February in Nairobi, Kenya, and will end on 4 March 2022. This event, organized in both physical and virtual modality, aims to bring together international and regional experts from both the public and private sector to discuss the future plans for infrastructure development in Africa, particularly those related to the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA).

PIDA is a joint initiative lead by the African Union Commission (AUC), the NEPAD Secretariat and the African Development Bank (AfDB) that aims at guiding the agenda for development of infrastructure (Transport, Energy, ICT and Trans-boundary Waters) in Africa. PIDA provides a framework for engagement with Africa’s development partners on the provision of regional and continental infrastructure, and aims at facilitating the physical, economic and social integration of the continent in support of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). It is implemented through multiannual priority action plans, the latest (PAP 2) covering the period 2021-2030.

The 7th PIDA Week will focus on how Africa can lead the way in the delivery of infrastructure in a post-COVID era, opening discussions on infrastructure priorities in the PIDA PAP 2, and on financial requirements of projects identified, with the current possibilities for the private sector to participate to investiments in such infrastructure. The full agenda of meetings is available here.

On 1th March, a thematic discussion was held on “The investment potentials of the LAPSSET land bridge to central Africa and beyond”, dedicated to the Lamu Port-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia (LAPSSET) transport corridor, one of the largest infrastructure projects in Africa, launched by the Government of Kenya in 2012 under its “Vision 2030” strategy, a corridor that is planned to link with other continental corridors and provide a land bridge through the African Great Lakes region up to the port of Douala, to create a route that, for this characteristic has been called “the great equatorial land bridge”.

Our CEO Danilo Desiderio participated as a speaker (consultant at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa) to the event, and pointed out that investing in infrastructure, alone, is not a guarantee for increasing intra-African trade. In fact, soft infrastructure interventions are also necessary to increase border and transport efficiency along trade corridors through a reduction in time, cost and number of documents necessary for import, export and transit operations.

The experience of other corridors in Africa has shown that navigating along these corridors can be expensive and frustrating, especially when cross-border transport operations involve the movement of cargo through countries located in the territories of different Regional Economic Communities, due to the need for transport and logistics companies to comply with regulatory frameworks applicable to cross-border transport operations that are deeply fragmented and unharmonized.

Mr. Desiderio concluded that considering the plans of the African Union to develop a network of Trans-African Highways to connect the main capitals and centres of production and consumption in the Continent, it will be opportune to overcome the current fragmentation of cross-border road transport regulation and open up a debate on the possibility to develop a regulatory framework at continental level, with the introduction of a pan-African transit guarantee system. The experience gained so far by each African REC in adopting such schemes, such as the RCTG carnet of COMESA, the SADC Regional Customs Transit Bond and the new ECOWAS Community transit guarantee mechanism should in future converge towards a continental solution applicable on all African corridors. An effective regional transit bond scheme also will require to be supported by a platform allowing the electronic exchange of transit messages between all the customs offices involved in transit operations, as well as the implementation of regional cargo tracking solutions able to insure the integrity of cargo during its movement from origin to destination. In this regard, the RECTS (Regional Electronic Cargo Tracking System) already operational on the Northern Corridor should be extended also to South Sudan and hopefully, to the Central African Republic and Cameroon so to ensure a “fast lane” from the Eastern to the Western African coast where cargo in transit can move without interruptions and additional costs for traders.