There is political and economic lunacy for infrastructure privatization in Africa today. In the area of energy development, private power infrastructure development has become fashionable.
Costs appear to be outstripping benefits.
According to the Financial Times of 27 th July 1999, a World Bank official who heads its Asia-Pacific region admitted that privatization has turned into a horror story in the wake of the Asian economic crisis. The problem is the aggressive push by international organizations, principally the World Bank, for privately financed infrastructure without proper regulatory and legal frameworks. The World Bank has shown unregulated love in the past for huge hydropower projects in the poor regions of the world. This love, however, has been blind to the accompanying politico-corporate crime committed jointly by top political leaders and some individuals in the Bank itself or the private energy developers. This way, the state and the corporations, instead of being agents of development, are but Lords of Poverty.