Pretoria - The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is scheduled to hold an Infrastructure Investment Summit on Thursday in Maputo, Mozambique.
In addition to representatives from the business and financial communities, the summit will also be attended by the Heads of State of Angola, Mozambique, Malawi and South Africa and the Chairperson of the African Union Commission.
President Jacob Zuma will participate in a High-Level Round Table session on Thursday, during which he will focus particularly on the North-South Corridor in his capacity as Champion of the AU-NEPAD Presidential Infrastructure Championship Initiative (PICI).
“The main objective of the summit is to present the SADC Regional Infrastructure Master Plan (RIDMP) and its Short-Term Action Plan (STAP) to a range of potential investors, funders of infrastructure and key international cooperating partners,” the Department of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement.
The summit, themed ‘Accelerating investment in SADC infrastructure through sustainable and innovative financing’, will also be used to facilitate direct consultations between potential investors and national project promoters.
The RIDMP and the STAP focus on energy, water, transport, ICT/Communications, tourism and meteorology.
The department said a range of projects are identified in the STAP phase (2013-2017), which will be prioritised for implementation.
This summit is very important for the SADC region, since it needs to accelerate its industrial and trade capacity through substantial infrastructure investment in order to expand economic growth and employment creation. – SAnews.gov.za
