APORDE Podcast Series EP3: What options do African countries have in financing their investment in infrastructure?

The African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE) is a high high-level training programme in development economics targeting policy-makers, researchers, academics and civil society representatives from Africa and other developing countries. The programme has been running since 2007 and is a joint initiative between the South African Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic) and Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS). This third in a six-part APORDE series focuses on exploring how African countries can finance their investment in infrastructure. Should they be relying on some of the new private financing models such as private equity, venture capital or blended financial models to name but a few or should they be looking at building their own development banks and developing their own domestic capital markets to issue bonds for infrastructure and reindustrialisation? Development economist Ayabonga Cawe will explore this and other difficult questions around the impact of these new instruments for developing economies within the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as well as within the imperatives of a just energy transition and overcoming energy apartheid. He explores these issues together with his guests Sonia Phalatse, a Researcher at the Institute for Economic Justice and Dr Penelope Hawkins, a senior economist in UNCTAD’s debt and development finance branch.