The East African Community, comprising Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, recently launched a $300 million infrastructure program aimed at reducing the cost of doing business in the region. In an e-mail interview, Andrew Roberts, senior operations officer in the World Bank's Africa Regional Integration Department, discussed infrastructure and development in the East African Community.
WPR: What are the major areas of underdeveloped infrastructure within the East African Community?
Andrew Roberts: Electricity access in the countries in the subregion is very low, ranging from 5 percent in Burundi and Rwanda to 30 percent in Sudan in 2008. Because demand is projected to increase rapidly, there is an urgent need to increase access, reduce capital and operating costs, and improve the security and reliability of supply. The region is blessed with a great variety of natural resources, but they are not uniformly distributed or optimally exploited. Ethiopia, for example, has so far exploited less than 1 gigawatt of its estimated 30 gigawatt hydroelectric capacity.