The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has announced that it will offer US$4.3bn to Africas energy and transport sectors
IFC executive vice-president and chief executive officer Jin-Yong Cai, who revealed the organisation's intentions in an interview with Bloomberg, said that the funds would be spent across the sub-Saharan Africa’s energy and transport sectors with a view to improve infrastructures in order to grow the continent’s economies.
Explaining the IFC’s strategy behind increasing financial injections, he added that the IFC hoped to be “the key facilitator or catalyst for private-sector development which is the fundamental driver for economic growth”.
An IFC statement read, “The announcement would have a particularly strong resonance in Senegal, given the energy difficulties the country has seen over recent years.
“The price of electricity in Senegal is exorbitant, with the country’s power provider, Senelec disclosing more than US$294mn debt,” it stated.
Jin-Yong commented, “I don’t know any other place where the electricity price is so high, but even with that high price, the supply is not sufficient.”
The IFC has also identified a crippling barrier to economic growth in Africa in the significant lack of infrastructure across the board.
“Unless you have decent infrastructure, you can’t have scale, and if you don’t have scale, you can’t really achieve any competitiveness in the business,” Jin-Yong revealed.
