MAKING SENSE OF AFRICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE ENDOWMENT: A BENCHMARKING APPROACH

# 3   The impact of historical trends on infrastructure endowments

## Variations over time

Africa’s present-day infrastructure is strongly influenced by the endowment that the countries inherited at independence. Because infrastructure is costly to build, stocks usually change slowly over time. Hence, differences across developing regions will reflect differences in their history. The current dataset contains time series data going back as far as 1960 for roads, 1970 for fixed telephone lines, 1980 for generating capacity, and 1990 for water and sanitation. No consistent time series data are available for access to electricity. The data points from the 1960s and 1970s are of particular interest for Africa, since they describe the situation at around the time of independence.

Overall, the data show some evidence of worldwide convergence in infrastructure levels (table 3.1). They also reveal the divergent starting points and differing rates of infrastructure growth in world regions. Convergence requires, of course, that regions with a low starting point grow faster than regions with a high starting point. We computed correlation coefficients between starting levels and growth rates. These coefficients are uniformly negative and always smaller than –0.28, suggesting that convergence is underway. The strongest evidence of convergence is found for water and sanitation (with correlation coefficients between –0.6 and –0.7) and roads (with correlation coefficients between –0.45 and –0.55). The lowest is for generating capacity (with a correlation coefficient of –0.28).

Bucking the trend toward worldwide convergence, the infrastructure gap between Africa and other developing regions is larger today than it was some decades ago. Slow convergence has occurred for some forms of infrastructure. At the beginning of the data series for paved roads and access to water and sanitation, Africa had the lowest endowment of any developing region. The region managed to achieve relatively high growth rates in each category, but they were not great enough to compensate for the region’s starting position. On the other hand, at the outset of the data series, Africa was doing significantly better than other developing regions with regard to overall road density, generation capacity, and fixed-line telephones. But growth rates in these categories have been slower than in other regions, so that by 2000 Africa had lost substantial ground relative to the other regions.

Africa’s failure to converge with the rest of the developing world is most clearly illustrated by the comparison between Africa and South Asia. At the outset of the period under study, South Asia was ahead of Africa in all forms of infrastructure except for fixed-line telephones and electrical generating capacity (figure 3.1). Their positions have since been reversed. The record on generating capacity is particularly stark. In 1980, Africa had almost three times as much generating capacity (per million people) as South Asia. Since then, capacity in South Asia has expanded at an average annual rate of 9 percent, while in Africa it has stagnated. Consequently, 17