Reflections on the Second Dakar Financing Summit

My takeaways from the Second Dakar Summit for Infrastructure Financing:

It is sometimes useful to focus on unique aspects of the problem that the Dakar Financing Summit aimed to solve: Africa’s massive infrastructure gap and its consequences. The International Energy Agency now estimates that Asia is set to use 50 percent of global electricity by 2025. China, with its 1.4 billion people, will account for a majority of that. Although Africa has a comparable population to China, its 54 countries will use just 3 percent of global electricity. That percentage of global energy use tracks the continent’s share of global trade, which also sits at a dismal 3 percent. That disparity is as eloquent and concise a treatise on Africa’s poverty as there can be. In 2022, UNCTAD reported that 45 out of 54 African economies still depend on commodities for over 60 percent of their revenue. Unprocessed and partially processed agricultural goods such as forest and mineral exports still constitute over 75 percent of Africa’s exports, while processed goods makes up about over 60 percent of the continent’s imports.

Reflections are posted here: