Abstract

The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has gathered and analyzed extensive data on infrastructure in more than 40 Sub-Saharan countries, including Angola. The results have been presented in reports covering different areas of infrastructure-information and communication technology (ICT), irrigation, power, transport, water and sanitation-and different policy areas, including investment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance. This report presents the key AICD findings for Angola, allowing the country's infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of its African peers. Given that Angola is a low-income resource-rich country, two sets of African benchmarks will be used to evaluate Angola's situation: fragile low-income countries and resource-rich countries. Detailed comparisons will also be made with immediate regional neighbors in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Several methodological issues should be borne in mind. First, because of the cross-country nature of data collection, a time lag is inevitable. The period covered by the AICD for Angola runs from 2005 to 2009. But financial data for comparator countries typically cover an earlier period, 2001-06, and are averaged to smooth out fluctuations, while technical data are reported for 2006. In recent years, Angola's economy has been among the fastest growing in Africa. Looking ahead, the country's gross development product (GDP) is projected to rise by 6.5 percent in 2011, with oil-sector growth of 3.8 percent and nonoil- sector growth of 8.1 percent (IMF 2011). A 27-year war that ended in 2002 ravaged the country and destroyed most of its economic infrastructure. Many roads, rails, and bridges were mined and obliterated; surviving infrastructure is dilapidated after years of neglect. Document type: Book

Abstract

Infrastructure contributed 1.3 percentage points to Burkina Faso's annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the past decade, much of it due to improvements in information and communication technology (ICT). Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries (MICs) could boost annual growth by more than 3 percentage points per capita.Today, Burkina Faso's infrastructure indicators look relatively good when compared with other low-income countries (LICs) in Africa. Burkina Faso has made significant progress in developing its infrastructure in recent years. The rapid modernization of the ICT sector, around 60 percent of the population lives within range of a global system for mobile communications (GSM) cell-phone signal. The expansion of safe water and sanitation technologies in urban areas since the late 1990s and the establishment of a system for funding road maintenance (by reducing the cost of road travel) should pay long-term dividends to the economy. The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has gathered and analyzed extensive data on infrastructure across almost all African countries, including Burkina Faso. The results have been presented in reports covering different areas of infrastructure including ICT, irrigation, power, transport and water and sanitation and various policy areas, including investment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance. Document type: Book