MALI’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE When all sources of spending are taken into account, Mali spent an annual average of about $555 million on infrastructure during the late 2000s. That is equivalent to about 10 percent of GDP, a relatively high share compared with other African countries, though still only about half of the share that China has spent on infrastructure in recent years. About 60 percent of total infrastructure spending has been investment. WSS spending represents a surprisingly small share of total public spending, with transport, power, and ICT absorbing larger shares (together about 85 percent of the total). The public sector (through taxes and user fees) and official development assistance are the largest source of investment, followed distantly by private funds. A total of $200 million is lost annually to inefficiencies, mainly because of the misalignment between tariffs and costs in the power sector. Only by changing the generation mix and significantly reducing generation costs will Mali be able to minimize this inefficiency in the long run. Raising tariffs to the level of full recovery will not affordable by a substantial share of the population, however.

Assessing spending needs against existing spending and potential efficiency gains leaves an annual funding gap of between $283 million per year, or 5.1 percent of GDP, most of it associated with water and sanitation and, to a much lesser extent, transport. Mali will likely need more than a decade to reach the illustrative infrastructure targets outlined in this report. Under business-as-usual assumptions for spending and efficiency, it would take over 50 years for Mali to reach these goals. Yet with a combination of increased finance, improved efficiency, and cost-reducing innovations, it should be possible to reduce that time to 15 years.

# The continental perspective

The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has gathered and analyzed extensive data on infrastructure in more than 40 Sub-Saharan countries, including Mali. The results have been presented in reports covering different areas of infrastructure—ICT, irrigation, power, transport, water and sanitation—and different policy areas, including investment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance.

This report presents the key AICD findings for Mali, allowing the country’s infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of its African peers. Given that Mali is a poor but stable country, two sets of African benchmarks will be used to evaluate Mali’s situation: nonfragile low-income countries and middle-income countries. Detailed comparisons will also be made with immediate regional neighbors in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Several methodological issues should be borne in mind. First, because of the cross-country nature of data collection, a time lag is inevitable. The period covered by the AICD runs from 2003 to 2008. Most technical data presented are for 2007 (or the most recent year available), while financial data are typically averaged over the available period to smooth out the effect of short-term fluctuations. Second, in order to make comparisons across countries, we had to standardize the indicators and analysis so that everything was done on a consistent basis. This means that some of the indicators presented here may be slightly different from those that are routinely reported and discussed at the country level.

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