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Building bridges out of poverty
Southern Africa Trust
January 31, 2008

http://www.southernafricatrust.org/Publications.html

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Summary
With less than seven years to go before the attainment of the universal millennium development goals (MDGs), the southern Africa region is still battling with infrastructure issues which might stifle the region's progression towards the achievement of the goals. In its January policy briefing Building Bridges Out of Poverty, the Southern Africa Trust examines how transport, energy and water infrastructure in the region can facilitate intra-regional trade and investment as well as sound management and development of water resources.

This policy brief identifies knowledge and policy gaps that may exist with a view to recommend interventions to address them. The brief examines the transport, energy, water, and financing components of the regional infrastructure interventions.

Regional cross-border infrastructure, in particular transport, energy and water, has the potential to facilitate intra-regional trade and investment, unlock national and regional comparative advantages, and address the special needs of landlocked countries to access to the rest of the world. The major constraint in road transport remains lack of adequate physical infrastructure, especially rural access roads. Better transport services resulting from improved roads provide the rural and urban poor with the possibility to participate in development opportunities, particularly access to jobs, markets, social services, educational and health facilities. New roads bring new economic activities with them, thereby contributing to the spatial spreading of development. A rural road, if complemented by other investments, can result in an increase in agricultural productivity and employment and therefore rural income.

The development corridor approach that the southern African Development Committee (SADC) has adopted has the potential to reduce poverty because it opens a variety of development opportunities along the corridor especially if feeder roads are developed.ther complicates the situation. SADC is also intensifying its efforts to make energy services affordable to rural communities as a basic right through household electrification, provision of energy services to key public facilities such as schools and clinics to help meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and promotion of sustainable access to cleaner cooking and heating fuels. capacity is prioritised and fast tracked. Furthermore biomass such as fuelwood and cowdung remain the primary source of basic energy for up to 80% of total energy consumption for families and informal businesses especially in rural areas in most southern African countries. The SADC Biomass Energy Conservation Programme promotes innovative and comprehensive solutions including use of energy efficient devices, profitable production and marketing of these devices, efficient wood fuel use and kitchen management, and substitution with alternative renewable energy sources to address the energy demands of the poor.

Water resource management and development is another area central to sustainable growth and poverty eradication. Most of the economies of SADC countries are overly dependent on rain-fed agriculture and inadequate water control infrastructure constitutes one of the important limiting factors for productivity and competitiveness of agriculture. Southern Africa's food production is often adversely affected by floods and droughts indicating lack of investment in water harvesting, storage and distribution infrastructure. water will be rationed. One of the approaches to address the looming water shortage is up-scaling investment in water harvesting, storage and distribution infrastructure in the short to medium term. In the long-term the solution may include investment in interbasin water transfers from abundant water resources in the northern parts of the SADC region (DRC, Zambia and Angola) to the water scarce in the South Western parts (Botswana, Namibia and South Africa).

Another potential solution is investment in desalination technology. Desalination is an attractive option for water scarce countries with dense population centers near the coast like South Africa. and innovative approaches to address. A SADC bond market initiative can be one of many possibilities which will enable better use of regional savings for investment purposes. Leveraging private sector investment through publicprivate partnerships is another avenue to address the financing gap in regional infrastructure development. Also tapping into the potential of development finance institutions at multilateral, regional and national levels can play an important role.

One of the stumbling blocks to resource mobilisation for regional cross-border infrastructure projects is the absence of an appropriate regional institutional and legal capacity in SADC to harness the full potential of the development finance institutions, private sector and international community to finance regional infrastructure in a way that is beneficial to the people of the region, especially the poor. or international markets.

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