World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick would on Tuesday start an eight-day, three-nation Africa tour to help to focus the attention of African governments, development partners and private investors on the need to seize the opportunity for renewed momentum in economic growth to overcome poverty.
Zoellick would head first to Sierra Leone before traveling to Cote d�Ivoire and then to Ethiopia for the African Union (AU) Summit, a release from the Accra Office of the Bank said on Thursday.
Although hit by the global food, fuel and financial crises, African governments have persisted in strengthening their economic policies as they pursue development, or rebuild after conflict, the release said.
Ahead of the trip, Zoellick had noted that many Sub-Saharan African countries had enjoyed a decade or more of solid growth before the crisis and it was important to preserve and expand on these gains by drawing investment to high growth areas.
He said he was visiting Africa to learn about how its people have coped with the global economic crisis and to see how the World Bank Group could work with them to improve prospects for economic growth and expanded opportunity.
Zoellick said much of Africa, including some fragile States, had a solid record of economic growth and had the potential to become another growth pole for the world economy.
He said a combination of policy and institutional reforms and external resources were urgently needed to help to build capacity; generate economic opportunities in fragile states and to lay the foundation for stability and overcoming poverty.
He also called for policies and investments that would expand Africa�s share of global and intra-African trade by fostering regional integration and building crucial infrastructure in energy; transport and irrigation needed to promote agriculture; manufacturing and industrialization on the Continent and for helping countries to adapt to climate change.
Zoellick would host a working breakfast forum on the sidelines of the AU Summit jointly with African Development Bank President Donald Kaberuka at which a number of African Leaders would discuss the transformative impact that information and communications technologies (ICTs) could have on the Continent.
�The skeptics wondered whether Africa was ready for a revolution in telecommunications. But African entrepreneurs, with the help of supportive government policies, changed the facts on the ground,� Zoellick said.
Acknowledging that private sector participation would continue to be the key to take Africa to the next level of high-speed connectivity and to create jobs, the forum would urge African Leaders to further lift barriers to private sector investment in the sector.
It would also encourage African Leaders and the private sector to take advantage of ICTs to advance agriculture, education and health sectors, as well as realize the considerable promise in other sectors.
During his trip, Zoellick would visit the Bank�s supported energy, agriculture and fishery projects and would hold working sessions with representatives of other donor agencies; discuss ways of boosting the Bank�s support to governmental and civil society organizations that promote peace, transparency, accountability and good governance.
In fiscal 2009, the World Bank Group, which supports Africa mainly through the International Development Association (IDA) and International Finance Corporation (IFC), committed a record $58.8 billion worldwide in loans, grants, equity investments, and guarantees. This represents a 54 per cent increase over 2008.
IDA, which provides grants and low-interest loans to the world�s 79 poorest countries, half of which are in Africa, committed $7.8 billion to Sub-Saharan African countries, a 36 per cent increase over the year before.
The Bank�s private sector arm, IFC, which provides investments and advisory services to build the private sector in developing countries, has seen its commitments in Africa growing from $445 million in 2005 to $1.82 billion in 2009.
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