A recent World Bank blog piece about infrastructure and development makes the following interesting comment :
"Will public investment in infrastructure be sufficient for unleashing faster economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa? The evidence, both academic and empirical seems to say not necessarily. We see from the works of Rodrik, Hausmann and Velasco (2005) that developing economies face multiple constraints to growth, and that public policy should focus on removing the binding constraints that really matter. However, that requires an accurate diagnosis of the binding constraints to growth"
It is not sufficient just building infrastructure we need to be clear whether it is a binding constraint. And the good news is that in Zambia's case it is one of the binding constraints. The last constraints study actually suggested that the key binding constraints to inclusive growth are low investment in human capital, low infrastructure services and coordination failures. In fact Zambia is addressing the first two except the last one - governance remains very poor and we can only hope that the recent political changes will now move the country forward in a better direction.
On infrastructure services, the problem is whether the current push is efficient from the public's perspective. There are two issues here. First, whether the government has not done enough to leverage private sector delivery of public infrastructure. This is not simply a question of public private partnerships in road, rail and education infrastructure development, it is also about having development control model that minimises external costs.
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