President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says the theme of the 12th African Union Summit reflects one of the essential needs of the African continent with significant growth impact on sustainable growth and development, especially at a time when the world economy is experiencing a downturn.

She spoke today during the closed session at the 12th African Union Summit for Heads of States being held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She added that the current global financial crisis seems to know no borders and presents a challenge to progressively deal with the demands of Africa. The Liberian leader called on the AU to evolve to reflect what she referred to as ‘the current realities on the continent to sustain the gains the continent has made in economic growth and development in recent years’. This, she noted, involves urgently responding to the infrastructure needs of our people, particularly roads and electricity. ‘Due to the resource scarcity made worse by the current financial crisis and high cost’, the President stressed, ‘African countries are required to make choices and trade-offs nationally and regionally’. However, she noted, the multiplier effects on overall economic growth is appreciable, with 2% as stated by the World Bank’s Vice President for Africa. 

The President described Africa’s record of investment in infrastructure, particularly in roads and energy as ‘dismal’. She observed that when Africa is compared to Latin America and Caribbean countries, it will be seen that countries in those parts of the world outpaced Africa in paved road and development. The results, she stressed, are similar for telephone and electricity infrastructure. She emphasized that ‘transport infrastructure cannot be substituted’, adding that ‘poor maintenance services are a major constraint, while unreliable and inadequate electricity supply are considered the most binding constraints for trade and investment in Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa’.

In the apparent failure of pure public infrastructure provision on the continent in the 1970’s and the failure of market provision in the 1980’s and 1990’s, she emphasized the need to search for institutional innovations that are appropriate for Africa. In this regard, she suggested, among other measures, ‘an evaluation of existing institutional frameworks in order to identify recipes that work for all countries’.