Bridging the digital divide will help shield Africa from external shocks

Governments have taken measures to counter and to stay the course of sound financial and macroeconomic policies which have buttressed our resilience to this crisis.

Together with sister financial institutions, we did our best to respond as appropriate in a customised way to requests for support to overcome the crisis.

For some countries it was the need for quick disbursing or front-loaded budget support, for others it was problems of liquidity or trade finance- and in many cases - filling the gap of retrenchment in investment flows to ensure key projects stay afloat.

In the past twelve months, to support Governments weather the storms, AfDB has more than doubled lending and grants from $5.6 billion dollars a year before the crisis, to just over $11 billion dollars by December of 2009. We improved significantly on our flexibilities and innovation.

As the global economy recovers, AfDB is committed to help African countries resume the pre-crisis growth trajectory.

But this requires boosting the callable capital base of the bank which were stretched to the limits by the demands on us during the crisis.

For that purpose, AfDB is working with shareholders for a General Capital Increase for the bank to get additional firepower to enable it provide greater support both in normal and crisis times.

While we have reasons to be proud of the manner in which we are gradually overcoming the worst of this crisis, we have also to learn the lessons necessary.

These include the risk of continued dependence on primary commodities, the need for a faster pace in economic interaction and reducing further the cost of doing business and a reassessment in relation to the role of the State in supporting economic development.

Booms and busts of this type and the commodities cycles will inevitably recur- perhaps not in the same scale or frequency, but occur they will- and hence the need for greater diversification, efforts to move up the value chain, and progressively tap into technology and the knowledge economy.

During this crisis, many Governments took measures to stay the course in improving the investment climate and enable the banking sector and the business community weather the worst of the storm––whether via fiscal policy, direct support or other counter-cyclical measures.

One of the observations we made over the last twelve months is the strong correlation between regional integration and the ability to withstand external shocks.

The faster the pace of economic integration, the greater the resilience to such external shocks.

Information Technologies at national, regional and continental levels will enable us reduce business costs, enhance integration, and access to the world of knowledge and information.

The Kigali Connect Africa Summit in October 2007 set three goals and assigned to us key implementation responsibilities: to connect all capitals and major cities by 2012, enhance human resource capacity and the requisite environment for investment in the IT industry.