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Ghana’s Infrastructure : A Continental PerspectiveInfrastructure contributed just over one percentage point to Ghana's annual per capital GDP growth during the 2000s. Raising the country s infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost the annual growth rate by more than 2.7 percentage points. Ghana has an advanced infrastructure platform when compared with other low-income countries in Africa. The country s coverage levels for rural water, electricity, and GSM signals are impressive. A large share of the road network is in good or fair condition. Institutional reforms have been adopted in the ICT, ports, roads, and water supply sectors. Ghana s most pressing challenges lie in the power sector, where outmoded transmission and distribution assets, rapid demand growth, and periodic hydrological shocks leave the country reliant on high-cost oil-based generation. Exceptionally high losses in water distribution leave little to reach end customers, who are thus exposed to intermittent supplies. Addressing Ghana's infrastructure challenges will require raising annual expenditures to $2.3 billion. The country already spends about $1.2 billion per year on infrastructure, equivalent to about 7.5 percent of GDP. A further $1.1 billion is lost each year to inefficiencies, notably underpricing of power.Ghana's annual infrastructure funding gap is about $0.4 billion per year, chiefly related to power and water. Following its recent oil discoveries, Ghana can raise additional public funding from increased tax receipts. The country has several strong areas on which to build and a solid economic base from which to fund incremental efforts.
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Cameroon's Infrastructure : A Continental PerspectiveThe poor state of Cameroon's
 infrastructure is a key bottleneck to the nation's
 economic growth. From 2000 to 2005, improvements in
 information and communications technology (ICT) boosted
 Cameroon's growth performance by 1.26 percentage points
 per capita, while deficient power infrastructure held growth
 back by 0.28 points per capita. If Cameroon could improve
 its infrastructure to the level of Africa's
 middle-income countries, it could raise its per capita
 economic growth rate by about 3.3 percentage points.
 Cameroon has made significant progress in many aspects of
 infrastructure, implementing institutional reforms across a
 broad range of sectors with a view to attracting
 private-sector participation and finance, which has
 generally led to performance improvements. But the country
 still faces a number of important infrastructure challenges,
 including poor road quality, expensive and unreliable
 electricity, and a stagnating and uncompetitive ICT sector.
 Cameroon currently spends around $930 million per year on
 infrastructure, with $586 million lost to inefficiencies.
 Removing those inefficiencies would leave an infrastructure
 funding gap of $350 million per year. Given Cameroon's
 relatively strong economy and natural-resource base, as well
 as its success in attracting private financing, the country
 should be able to close that gap and meet its infrastructure
 goals within 13 years.
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Zambia's InfrastructureInfrastructure improvements contributed
 0.6 percentage points to the annual per capita growth of
 Zambia's gross domestic product (GDP) over the past
 decade, mostly because of the exponential growth of
 information and communication technology (ICT) services.
 Poor performance of the power sector reduced the per capita
 growth rate by 0.1 percentage point. Simulations suggest
 that if Zambia's infrastructure platform could be
 improved to the level of the African leader, Mauritius, per
 capita growth rates could increase by two percentage points
 per year. Zambia's high generation capacity and
 relatively high power consumption are accompanied by fewer
 power outages than its neighbors. But Zambia's power
 sector is primarily oriented toward the mining industry,
 while household electrification, at 20 percent, is about
 half that in other resource-rich countries. Zambia's
 power tariffs are among the lowest in Africa and are less
 than half the level needed to accelerate electrification and
 keep pace with mining sector demands. Meeting future power
 demands and raising electrification rates will be difficult
 without increasing power tariffs. Zambia's
 infrastructure situation is more hopeful than that of many
 other African countries. Infrastructure spending needs,
 though large, are not beyond the realm of possibility, and
 Zambia's resource wealth and relatively well-off
 population provide a more solid financing basis than is
 available to many other countries. Zambia's
 infrastructure funding gap, though substantial, can be
 dramatically reduced through measures to stem inefficiencies
 and lower costs.