African Development Bank to invest 100 million euros in Cape Verde

After the World Bank, it was now the African Development Bank’s turn to sit down at the table with the government to analyze the bank’s strategy for the development of the archipelago – a strategy that, according to Minister of Finances and Planning Cristina Duarte, took into consideration the Cape Verdean government’s Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategic Document. “Both and World Bank and the ADB used this document as a point of departure and, based on our mid-term vision, elaborated their intervention strategy here in the country,” she affirmed.

The African Development Bank will continue to support Cape Verde on two pillars: infrastructure development and institutional support. Cristina Duarte explained that the country’s infrastructures must be managed by more efficient entities, while institutional support will help increase organizational efficiency so that maximum advantage may be taken of what has been built.

In February of this year, during the Africa Innovation Summit, which took place in the city of Praia, the African Development Bank presented the “Africa 50 Fund” in Cape Verde, a fund that foresees the regional integration of various African countries on the middle to long term, and intends to mobilize financing necessary for the construction of major infrastructures.

At the time, the director of the ADB’s research department, Steve Kayizi-Magerwa, explained that the bank had created a fund to finance projects in the areas of energy, transportation and information technology for the coming fifty years. “We’ve financed major projects, but we want even larger ones. We’re thinking about the Inga hydroelectric dam, which is being built in Congo and which, when ready, will produce 40,000 megawatts of energy – in other words, double that of the planet’s largest structure now. The idea is to finance mega-projects that will transform Africa,” he said.

The ADB representative explained that the fund’s initial capital is US$ 3 billion, but could reach US$ 100 billion within ten years. The financing will come from central banks, sovereign funds, pension fun ds and funds related to large-scale fortunes on the African continent.

The ADB official also affirmed that the fund will give priority to public-private partnerships so that both sectors gain from the construction of infrastructures on the continent. “What we try to do is create partnerships between the government and the private sector. These will be public-private partnerships because we believe that this way we’ll have greater benefits both for states and for private businesses,” he stressed.

Copyright Asemana 2014