Harmonisation of Sectoral Policies

Infrastructure	Natural Resources	Food and Agriculture	Climate
Transport	Water
Communications	Mining
Energy	Environment

Globalization and Regional Integration require effective regional infrastructure  in  transport, communications, and energy — to widen and integrate markets, achieve economies of scale, encourage participation of the private sector, and attract foreign direct investment and technology.

Infrastructure development is included in the treaties of all the African regional economic communities, which provide the best framework for aligning sectoral policies, designing regional master plans, harmonizing
regulatory regimes and investment codes, attracting seed capital, and mobilizing investment resources.Yet despite efforts to integrate transport, communications, and energy, gaps still exist in infrastructure and services across regional economic communities and across Africa — raising the cost of doing business and impeding factor mobility, investment, and competitiveness.

The need is for sustainable infrastructure systems that meet economic demand and provide basic social services, especially for poor people. These infrastructure systems must be safe, reliable, efficient, affordable, and environmentally sound, and they should help the least developed and landlocked countries compete in regional and international markets.To meet these requirements, governments must concentrate on policy and regulation, reduce their interference in the management of infrastructure services, and devise appropriate regulatory frameworks for monitoring performance and liberalizing access to infrastructure service markets.

The regional economic communities want to cooperate on infrastructure and services, but they lack the capacity and resources to do so. Recent initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the successors to the global programmes of the United Nations Transport and Communications Decade for Africa (UNTACDA) could provide the driving force for more capital-intensive infrastructure development.

Africa’s endowment of natural resources which including fertile soils, large water resources, and rich mineral deposits, rallies the potential role of natural resources and other productive sectors in regional integration, including cooperation in water, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing and also suggests that there are ways of enhancing the competitiveness and efficiency of natural resources production, as well as the contribution of these resources to regional integration.

On improving rural infrastructure, increasing aggregate food production at the farm level is not enough to ensure food security at the national, regional, and continent levels. Three stages of African farming need special attention to improve productivity: provision of inputs (fertilizer, veterinary services, and the like), harvesting and storage, and marketing. All three depend on the quality of rural infrastructure—including roads, railways, rural energy systems, processing facilities, communications (such as radio), agricultural extension systems, and credit facilities