The vice-president of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group, Sérgio Pimenta, believes that African governments are committed to adopting measures that mobilise the private sector to compensate for the lack of liquidity in public finances.
‘Governments are increasingly wanting to use private solutions to public development problems. In a systematic and transparent way they are bringing in the private sector to provide public services of the highest possible quality,’ said Sérgio Pimenta in an interview with Lusa in Lisbon.
The private sector, he added, brings great added value to governments, because the provision of public services is closely linked to the issue of industrialising the continent and adding value to African products.
‘Countries don’t just want to export, they want to add value, and they are using the public-private partnership model to bring more of the strength of the private sector together with the public sector to provide joint solutions, which is why we at the IFC are increasingly working together with our colleagues at the World Bank,’ explained the official who has been the IFC’s vice-president for Africa for seven years.
Asked whether mega-projects like the Lobito Corridor, which mobilises billions of dollars and crosses three countries, is a preferred model compared to others aimed at small, less bureaucratic investments with the capacity to transform the local economy, Sérgio Pimenta replied that the preference for large projects has to do with the choice of countries and the scale of the markets.
‘The business climate is not always easy, but for several years now African governments have been taking this issue very seriously and taking the necessary measures to simplify investments,’ he said.
For Sérgio Pimenta, the focus on major projects such as the regional energy market in southern Africa or the Lobito Corridor, a railway line that will connect the port of Lobito, in Angola, to Zambia, also crossing the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo), is the result of the need to give scale to investments by large private groups.
‘When there are small markets – and political leaders and private investors have realised this – you have to work together, look at a region and not just a country,’ he said.