URBANIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION

The link between GDP and formal
housing expenditure, paired with
trends in urbanization, suggests
that Africa is poised to see a
major expansion of the urban
housing market, if it puts the
right enabling factors in place.
higher prevalence of paved roads and better access
to electricity; East and Southern Africa do best on
Internet servers (table 4.2).
The annual financing requirement for infrastructure
investment in Africa excluding North Africa
is estimated at $93 billion (Gutman, Sy and
Chattopadhyay, 2015), but this covers rural and
urban areas. With rapid urbanization and growing
cities, countries will need to simultaneously catch up
with the backlog, invest for the growing population
and spend on maintenance.
In the last two decades the region has seen significant
growth in infrastructure investment, with an
increasing share of private sector finance relative to
official development assistance, including growing
investment by China. Still, 65 per cent of the total
comes from public budgets, representing 4 percent
of GDP. This might be lower than the 5–6 per cent of
GDP advocated by development practitioners, but
countries such as Angola, Cabo Verde and Lesotho
are investing more than 8 per cent of GDP (Gutman,
Sy and Chattopadhyay, 2015).
As Africa invests in urban infrastructure to catch up
with its needs, with the help of global commitments
by donor countries to the Sustainable Development
Goals and the New Urban Agenda, 6 it should aim
to develop the domestic construction sector
and support services. Job creation, particularly
for women and youth, should be a component
of funded development projects. Some have
questioned the dual goal of job creation via
infrastructure investment, saying that domestic
procurement policies may delay delivery or reduce
quality (Altbeker, McKeown and Bernstein, 2012).
And many emerging sectors will need government
support to deliver at required standards, particularly
informal and small enterprises, and such support
should be paired with procurement targets.
CLASSIFIED ROAD
NETWORK DENSITY,
PER LAND AREA
(KM/1,000 SQ KM)
CLASSIFIED ROAD
NETWORK DENSITY,
PER POPULATION
(KM/1,000 PERSONS)
PAVED ROADS (% OF TOTAL)
Central 36.5 2.1 23.0
Africa
Elsewhere
World
East 127.9 1.2 29.5
North 71.2
Southern 99.8 5.5 35.4
West 83.7 2.3 18.3
East Asia and Pacific Other road data: last available 2001–2008
European Union
Latin America and
Caribbean
North America
South Asia
THE URBANIZATION–INDUSTRIALIZATION NEXUS
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