From infrastructure to industrialisation: Building Africa's next bridge to economic integration

For more than two decades, Africa has poured political capital, financial resources and institutional energy into connecting the continent — and the results are visible in roads, railways, transmission lines, bridges and border facilities across the map. That foundation is real, and it is substantial. The opportunity before us now is to make every one of those assets deliver its full promise. The next generation of African infrastructure delivery will be defined not only by how much capital we mobilise, but by how effectively we align the institutions, regulations, standards and operating systems on either side of our borders. That alignment is the next bridge to build — and it is well within our reach. NEPAD was created twenty-five years ago around a fundamental recognition: there are things no African state can build effectively on its own. A regional power pool cannot stop at a national border. A trade corridor cannot function if the road ends in a queue. A railway connecting markets cannot operate efficiently if standards change every time the train crosses a frontier. That logic drove the creation of NEPAD in 2001, and later the Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative in 2010, PIDA PAP 1 in 2012 and PIDA PAP 2 in 2021. Today, PAP 2 holds 69 priority projects with capital expenditure estimated at roughly US$160.8 billion. As we begin its mid-term review, the task is not merely to ask whether the original ambition was correct, but what twenty-five years of implementation have taught us about what actually makes projects move. The first lesson is that Africa has delivered far more than is often acknowledged. Under the first PIDA Priority Action Plan, the continent built or rehabilitated roughly 16,000 kilometres of roads, developed around 4,000 kilometres of railway across corridors and national extensions, and laid about 3,500 kilometres of transmission lines that gave regional electricity trade its physical foundation. Infrastructure commitments averaged around US$10 billion a year. These are not declarations; they are physical assets. When we discuss Africa’s infrastructure challenge, we sometimes begin from the assumption that continental programmes have failed to build. The evidence says otherwise. Africa can build. The opportunity now is to ensure that what we build performs as an integrated regional system. This is where the next chapter of value lies. Our power grids can be physically synchronised across borders; the prize is to have the commercial rules ready to trade electricity across them from day one. We have created a Single African Air Transport Market in law; the prize is to lift intra-African air connectivity well beyond today’s 23 per cent. Road corridors can be paved end to end; the prize is border clearance measured in hours rather than days. Railway track can exist on both sides of a frontier; the prize is fully interoperable gauge, signalling and operating rules. A bridge is the beginning of a corridor. A transmission line is the beginning of a power market. An airport is the beginning of an integrated air transport system. Physical connectivity is the platform — and institutional alignment is what turns it into performance. The conventional explanation for the gap between building and delivering is financing, and the arithmetic is serious. Where PAP 1 commitments averaged around US$10 billion annually, PAP 2 requires roughly US$16 billion a year — about 60 per cent more. That challenge is real and should not be minimised. But finance alone cannot explain why some already-financed projects still do not move, why some completed assets operate below capacity, or why infrastructure can be physically ready while commercial operations are still being arranged. The question is not whether Africa needs more infrastructure finance — of course it does — but whether finance is always the binding constraint. Recognising when it is not is itself an opportunity, because it points to gains we can capture without waiting for a single additional dollar. There is a simple test. Imagine that tonight the entire financing requirement of a stalled cross-border project is placed in escrow, every dollar available. Could construction lawfully begin tomorrow morning? If yes, finance was the binding constraint. Very often the answer is no — because the treaty has not yet been operationalised, the technical standard has not yet converged, the tariff has not yet been agreed, the deciding authority has not yet been seated, land has not yet been secured, or the off-taker has not yet been contracted. Money can finance a project. What money cannot do is substitute for a decision still waiting to be taken — and those decisions are ours to accelerate. Three cases show how much is within our grasp. Kazungula is one of Africa’s important success stories: the bridge and one-stop border post between Botswana and Zambia, an investment of about US$259 million, broke ground in December 2014 and was commissioned in May 2021. The results are significant — clearance times fell from around seven days to roughly sixteen hours, and daily truck movements rose from about 130 to 200. Crucially, during those six years of construction, the two countries were also doing the less visible but equally vital work of aligning customs, immigration and legal instruments. The engineering determined whether the bridge could physically open; institutional convergence determined how quickly it could function as a border system. Five years on, further gains remain available: fuller electronic integration of the two customs systems, a single submission for traders, and streamlined charges across jurisdictions. Kazungula did not fall short — it succeeded, and it teaches us that a completed asset reveals the next interface to master. You solve the bridge, then you refine customs; you refine customs, then you connect data; and each step compounds the value of the last. Energy tells a similarly instructive story. The Ethiopia–Kenya HVDC line, stretching roughly 1,045 kilometres, was commissioned in 2022. The Kenya–Tanzania 400-kilovolt interconnector was energised in December 2024. The first 50 megawatts were then wheeled from Ethiopia through Kenya into Tanzania on 30 June 2025 — a milestone reached once wheeling tariffs, exchange agreements and a transmission pricing methodology were settled. The lesson is clear and actionable: when the commercial framework advances in step with the towers and wires, a finished asset becomes a delivering asset far sooner. The third case shows the same opportunity even where the infrastructure is neither concrete nor steel. Africa took its first major step toward liberalised air transport with the Yamoussoukro Decision in 1999, and launched the Single African Air Transport Market in 2018. Today 38 states have joined SAATM, representing around 80 per cent of the continent’s air traffic, and 26 have signed a memorandum of implementation. The instruments and the political commitment are in place; the next step is to translate signatures into domesticated, operational rules that change what an airline can do tomorrow morning. That step is squarely within our control. Put the three cases together and a consistent, encouraging pattern emerges. Political commitment was present. Engineering capability was present. Finance was largely present. In several cases the physical asset already existed. The decisive work sat at the interface between administrations — between two customs authorities agreeing on one system, between regulators agreeing on one wheeling tariff, between civil aviation authorities implementing common market-access rules, between governments empowering one institution to decide on behalf of a project. This is precisely where the next productivity gain in African infrastructure delivery is waiting: not in replacing political leadership, but in converting it into administrative convergence with deadlines and authority. The opportunity grows sharper as we add actors. A project involving two states, two regulators, one lender and one agreed standard is highly manageable; many issues can be solved pairwise. Expand it to five states, five regulators, six lenders and three competing standards, and the number of concurrences multiplies, each one a point at which momentum can be gained or lost. The insight is empowering: because the cost of coordination behaves more like a product than a sum, reducing the number of unresolved interfaces delivers outsized acceleration. Organise the interfaces well, and regional projects move faster than their scale would suggest. That leads to six practical principles, in sequence. First, anchor the project on the smallest workable bilateral arrangement and let others align progressively around it — bridges are built between two banks, not among fifty. Second, seat the authority before negotiating the next instrument, so someone can decide and resolve disagreements. Third, converge competing plans onto one agreed project architecture. Fourth, run legal, regulatory and standards work in parallel with engineering and construction rather than in sequence. Fifth, let financing close once the enabling environment is sufficiently organised for delivery. And sixth, design operations and maintenance on day one, not at commissioning. The underlying principle is straightforward and liberating: institutional preparation is project preparation. Regulatory alignment is not a secondary activity; it is part of the critical path — and treating it as such shortens the road to delivery. This matters for far more than infrastructure utilisation, because infrastructure is ultimately an instrument of industrial policy. Every corridor should answer one question: what does this infrastructure allow Africa to produce? A transport corridor tells us the road, rail or port asset exists. A trade corridor means goods can cross the border predictably and at competitive cost. A productive corridor means firms begin locating along that infrastructure because power, logistics and inputs are reliable. And an industrial ecosystem emerges when manufacturing, beneficiation and regional value chains anchor themselves around those networks. The journey from a transport corridor to an industrial ecosystem is measured not only in kilometres, but in regulations, standards, operating agreements and institutional performance — every one of which we know how to build. AUDA-NEPAD is putting three measures behind this approach. The PIDA PAP 2 mid-term review opens at the end of August, recalibrating the 2026–2030 portfolio against real delivery evidence so that our next investments are our best-targeted yet. The Service Delivery Mechanism is being refocused so that alongside project preparation it actively clears the legal, regulatory and institutional pathways that let prepared projects move. And we are building a real-time project dashboard so member states and investors can see not simply whether a project exists, but where it stands, where the financing gap sits and, critically, which decision will unlock progress. Transparency of this kind turns a constraint into an early, solvable signal for leadership to act on. Some decisions belong to leaders, and I offer five of them — decisions, not declarations, each one an opportunity to accelerate delivery. To Heads of State and Government: for every priority cross-border project, seat a decision-making authority before the next treaty instrument is signed. To Ministers of Infrastructure and Energy: for one project ready to advance, name the single regulation or approval that will release it, and the office empowered to act. To Ministers of Finance: fund alignment work directly — legal convergence, standards harmonisation and regulatory coordination are not soft costs but often the critical path to the investment itself. To regulators and utilities: agree wheeling tariffs and operating rules while transmission infrastructure is still under construction, so power can flow the moment the line is energised. And to every government represented: take one regional protocol you have already signed and domesticate it before the next PIDA Week in November. None of these actions requires discovering a new source of financing. Every one of them can shorten infrastructure delivery. Africa needs more capital — and capital achieves its full purpose when our institutions allow the asset to perform. So as we build the next generation of African infrastructure, let us build not only the bridge, the railway, the border post and the transmission line, but also the rules, institutions and trust that allow infrastructure to work across borders. That is how physical connectivity becomes economic integration. And that is how infrastructure becomes industrialisation.