Conference Sectors: Energy | ICT & Telecoms | Oil & Gas | Transport

Energy

The African continent currently spends about $11.6 billion a year on power, roughly a quarter of the $40 billion it should be spending annually to satisfy its energy needs.  The World Bank report estimates that “the entire installed generation capacity of the 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa is 68 gigawatts, no more than Spain’s, and without South Africa, the total falls to 28 gigawatts”.

Only 5 percent of Africa’s hydropower has been tapped, yet electricity consumers in Nigeria spend as much as $13 billion per year from energy generated from diesel when the country  needs an investment of about $10 billion a year to fully develop power infrastructure in the country.  In many other African countries, the supply of electricity is unpredictable and grossly inadequate.

To date, there have been some 45 independent power projects (IPPs) across 17 African countries, amounting to an investment of roughly $10 billion, and producing about 12,000 megawatts of power, according to data from South Africa’s Graduate School of Business.

Africa-Australia Infrastructure Conference will present opportunities in:

• Voice segment in under-penetrated markets
• Rural telephony
• Internet infrastructures
• Broadband internet
• Mobile content development
• Data services and
• Mobile money services.
• Workforce capacity-building training among others.

ICT & Telecoms

In Sub-Saharan Africa, ICT “has been the most successful sector, attracting 76 percent of regional investment (or $60 billion) and implementing 97 projects in 37 countries,” the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), a donor funded technical assistance facility, wrote in a report in May 2010.

The number of active mobile phone subscriptions in Africa has crossed the half-a-billion mark in the third quarter of 2010 to reach 506 million at the end of September 2010. By 2015, there will be 265 million mobile broadband subscriptions in Africa, a huge increase from the current figure of about 12 million. Over five intercontinental fibre optic cables have landed in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2009 triggering increased high-speed internet penetration. The Sub-Saharan Africa ICT & Telecom market has recorded giant strides such as the M-PESA mobile payment system  invented in Kenya and historical growth of mobile phone subscribers in Nigeria from 100,000 to more than 70 million subscribers in less than a decade.

According to World Bank estimates, internet users in Africa account for only 10.9 percent of the total population of Africa nowadays. There are vastly complex problems [hampering internet access] such as lack of wireline infrastructure, low penetration of computers, and the demographics are such that most of the people are in rural areas where there is lack of adequate infrastructure.

Africa-Australia Infrastructure Conference will present business/investment opportunities in participating countries in areas such as:

• Power sector PPPs, assets concessions, acquisitions, bonds and loans among others
• Construction of Natural Gas transmission and distribution networks and storage facilities
• Operations and management of power stations and transmission infrastructure in ROM, ROT and O& M contracts
• Greenfield projects in gas, wind farm, solar and coal-fired power generation
• Work force capacity-building training opportunities among many others.

Oil & Gas

The International Energy Agency (IEA) had projected that about $17 trillion of new investments would be needed between now and 2025 in the emerging and developing economies, out of which $8 trillion is expected to be in Africa.

The Africa Petroleum Producers Association (APPA) is currently seeking to analyse and generate ideas on the role financial institutions can play in developing the oil and gas industry in Africa with respect to financing investment projects through several ways.  Aside from providing credit facilities to strategic projects, financial institutions could take equity positions in oil and gas projects across Africa.

African oil and gas have become important components of the world’s hydrocarbon supply-demand balance.  By 2015, 13 percent of global oil production will take place in Africa, compared with 9 percent in 1998—a 5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

These developments have thrown up tremendous opportunities for investment in the areas of exploration, production, refining and infrastructure in the oil and gas sector.

The Conference will present opportunities in:

• Joint financing of strategic oil
• Co-financing of studies and research projects
• Pipe laying equipment and services
• Strategic stocking facilities;
• Greenfield projects
• Equipment leasing
• Work force capacity-building training among others.

Transport

According to a recent report on Africa, published in Infrastructure Investor magazine, African roads, especially regional trade links, are becoming bankable targets for private sector capital. In November 2010, French infrastructure group Eiffage announced that it had closed a 30-year contract to build, finance, maintain and operate a 25-kilometre Greenfield road in Senegal.

On the seafront, opportunities for private sector investments in ports are set to increase steadily, as the continent’s ports are nearing capacity with governments increasingly turning to the private sector to help remedy the capacity gap. In October 2010, the East African Community (EAC) said in a report that the ports of Mombasa, in Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, are fast approaching their capacity limits. The long-term solution, the report highlighted, would be to upgrade capacity for those ports while developing new ports in both countries.

The inland water transport industry presents growing opportunities in countries such as Nigeria considering its recent dredging of the River Niger and ongoing work on the River Benue that links-up the Northern part of the country.

There have also been a fair number of rail concessions, but the promise many hold is contingent on the ability to overcome certain obstacles.

Africa Australia Conference will present participating African countries with a forum to present opportunities in transport asset concessions such as:

• Roads
• Seaports
• Tunnels
• Airport  terminals
• Bridges and
• Rail.
• Workforce capacity-building training among others.