Africa needs between $60 and $70 billion yearly to provide infrastructure, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has said.

AfDB President Dr Akinwumi Adesina spoke at the first Global Infrastructure Forum in Washington last weekend.

He said: “If we don’t fix Africa’s infrastructure financing gap, we will continue to take two percentage points off Africa’s annual growth rates. And we cannot allow that to happen.’’

At a panel with the heads of nine other Multilateral Development Banks and the chair of the G24, Adesina said: “The funding that we in the MDBs can provide is large – but above all it is our role to leverage further funds. The funds on capital markets which are available for infrastructure far exceed what we have: in Africa, we will leverage the continent’s pension funds, its sovereign wealth funds and its private equity funds, which we estimate at some $520 billion. I am convinced that the future of Africa lies inside Africa – using African resources, and utilising African markets.”

The Forum titled: ‘Spending more, spending better’ – was introduced by World Bank President Jim Kim and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“In Addis Ababa last year,” he said, “the MDBs were charged with finding ways to turn ‘billions into trillions’ to finance the world’s development needs. And yet our own funding has gone down – from $112 billion in 2014 to $83 billion in 2015.”

“I may be the colourful one,” said Ban Ki-moon, “but you (the heads of the MDBs) are the powerful ones. You have the money to deliver on our policies.”

Adesina repeated that the core of the development challenge in Africa is the energy challenge. “With 650 million Africans without electricity, we have to light up and power Africa.” He explained how a further US $12-billion AfDB investment in energy over the next five years is expected to unlock an additional US $40-50 billion in funding from the private sector.

He pointed to the role of the Africa50 Fund in preparing bankable infrastructure projects and unlocking untapped African resources.

He urged other MDBs to innovate in the balance sheet management, after the recent exposure exchange between the AfDB, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which has freed up some US $10 billion for extra infrastructure lending for the AfDB.