Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has called for private and public sector partnership to boost infrastructure financing in Africa.
Speaking at the opening of the African Infrastructure Summit, organised by the African Finance Corporation (AFC) in Abuja on Tuesday, Osinbajo called for a new thinking between AFC and Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) partners to save the continent from huge infrastructure deficit.
At the event, tagged “Infrastructure Revolution” to mark the 10th anniversary of AFC, Osinbajo said: “So the times certainly call for new thinking. AFC and DFI partners must now begin to look for new ways of engaging with the African governments, giving the difficult things and problems that are now clearly the case.
“Unless corporations like AFC recognise what is important to do in these times, the next 10 years will indeed be very difficult for our own economies, for African economies.
“We will be relying on AFCs, especially our own DFIs to do much more; we will be relying on them to show much more leadership and to take greater risks.
“There is no question at all that all of what we required, all of what is needed will not be provided just by government. “As a matter of fact, it is very clear that governments cannot finance the huge infrastructure needs of most countries. As a matter of fact, without the private sector, it is completely impossible for government to even finance current infrastructure needs.’’
According to Osinbajo, all the country’s refineries at the moment do not refine 600,000 barrels of oil, adding that one single private investor is building the largest single line refinery, 650,000 barrels of oil.
“There is no question at all that government cannot simply compare with the power of the private sector and with the resources that the private sector can pull together.
It is the AFCs that can bring the private sector de-risk government to a certain extent and bring the private sector and the public sector to deliver on the kind of infrastructure needs that our country requires. Osinbajo also said it was obvious that markets would determine practically everything.
