President Paul Kagame has emphasized on the need to have political will and financing as two sides of the same coin to be able to meet Africa's infrastructure development needs.
He was speaking in a panel discussion during the second Dakar Financing Summit for Africa's Infrastructure Development in Senegal, on Thursday, February 2.
The forum, themed: "Maintaining the momentum towards world-class infrastructure in Africa," seeks to catalyse public, private and blended funding for identified priority regional infrastructure projects.
Different African Heads of State, government officials, and members of the private sector gathered to discuss ways of securing funding for regional infrastructure projects under the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), an AUDA-NEPAD initiative.
Kagame said there are two sides of infrastructure; the actual infrastructure and the way it serves people as well as the political side of it which is supposed to enable the development of infrastructure and serve people the right way.
He said: "When the politics is wrong, everything else goes wrong...one of the things that can easily integrate our continent is the infrastructure.
"If we made these developments of infrastructure in different places seamless, connected and enabling people from one part of the continent to use that, later on, issues of affordability, accessibility, and usage will also follow."
The Head of State shared some of the lessons that Rwanda has learnt from challenging circumstances in terms of coming up with home-grown solutions and what much more can be done with partnerships to set the country on a better path.
"We have domestic resources but also external resources that we can tap into as long as we are able to clearly show the opportunities available," he said.
Development of infrastructure is an important driver of progress. As it stands, the lack of reliable infrastructure in energy, telecommunications, and transport networks have a negative effect on growth and business productivity in Africa.
African leaders at the summit called on the private sector to take up its role in developing quality infrastructure and going above the different challenges faced by countries while acquiring financing for infrastructure projects.
