What – or what more – can the APRM do about under-developed infrastructure The core issues are institutional in nature. Pouring additional funding into sectors characterized by high levels of inefficiency and low institutional capacity makes little sense. In order to promote a level of productivity among firms that is conducive to higher and sustainable economic growth, Africa needs to improve the capacity and efficiency of those institutions responsible for developing and managing infrastructure. The goal is not to reinvent existing institutions but to reform them and support their evolution. The APRM could make further contribution through a few interventions, such as. 1. However, achieving such efficiency gains and altering existing institutional arrangements is neither easy, nor without significant cost implications of its own. It may involve introducing new management practices, or even a wholesale reform of institutional architecture. For example, one means of managing infrastructure is to assign it to an autonomous agency with its own guaranteed income stream. This theoretically allows infrastructure to be managed as a technocratic responsibility, insulated from political manipulation or budgetary shifts.149 But establishing institutions is a complex process and will probably meet resistance from officials previously tasked with these responsibilities. 2. Bottleneck 7: Under-development of human resources The importance of infrastructure to Africa‘s future, and the need to coordinate a response across borders is recognised and responded to by the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). A collaborative effort between the African Union Commission, the NEPAD Agency and the African Development Bank, PIDA seeks to integrate the continent‘s various infrastructure plans (at national, REC and continental levels) to address Africa‘s infrastructure deficits. PIDA was adopted in 2012 by African heads of state and government and foresees infrastructure investments to the tune of some $360bn between 2011 and 2040.150 A select group of 51 Priority Action Projects (PAP) have been identified, requiring investments of some $7.5bn per year to 2020. To meet these expenses, it proposes to tap both established or ‗traditional‘ sources of finance and new ones, such as from the BRICS bank. An innovative feature of PIDA is the Presidential Infrastructure Champions Initiative (PICI), which is intended to secure ongoing, high-level political support for these endeavours. 149 150 Paying more attention in the review process both to the financial and non-financial (often governance-based) issues that confront infrastructure programmes. The latter are not always adequately recognised, and Africa could benefit from greater efficiencies in the way it tackled these problems. This would probably require conducting case studies of particular projects, which would in turn require that CRMs include people with experience in engineering and project management. Introducing into its country self-assessment questionnaire questions about what is hindering African countries from overcoming their infrastructural deficits and how they can be addressed. Caution would be needed to ensure that this did not unduly expand the questionnaire. Concept The state of human capital in a country is an important contributor to its economic prospects, and to the level of contentment in society more broadly. The two key indicators here are the state of health and education.151 These two are of particular importance since a healthy and skilled workforce effectively determines whether countries can prosper in the dynamic global economy. As President Museveni specifically emphasised: ―The human resource must be healthy, educated and properly skilled. An educated, skilled and healthy workforce is important for the socio-economic development of a country.‖152 This section is related to Bottlenecks no. 2 (interference with the private sector), no. 5 (lack of industrialisation and low value addition), no. 8 (underdevelopment of agriculture), no. 9 (under-development of the services sector), and no. 13 (structural inequalities in access to opportunities). Gwilliam K, et al Roads in Sub-Saharan Africa (Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, Summary of Background Paper 14, June 2008) p. 6. See AfDB, Closing the Infrastructure Gap Vital for Africa‟s Transformation (undated), available at https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/af db/Documents/GenericDocuments/PIDA%20brief%20closing%2 0gap.pdf 151 152 38 Others could certainly be identified, but given the importance of these two, this section is focused on them. See Discussion Paper, p. 8.