Introduction

This chapter outlines some of the principal ongoing infrastructure challenges faced by the East African sub-region, with a particular focus on water, sanitation, energy, surface transport and information and communications technology (ICT). The progress made to date is evaluated in the light of recent studies and new data.

At the sub-regional level, in most measures, East Africa's infrastructure ranks behind that of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). However, in some areas (such as water and sanitation and internet density), East African performance is comparable to that of Southern Africa.

There are significant opportunities for East Africa to improve its infrastructure, particularly in productivity-related areas, namely energy production, logistics and ICT. For instance, the African Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) study (AICD, 2011) estimated that if the sub-region's overall infrastructure were raised to the level of the top-performing African country, Mauritius, gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 6%. In this respect, increased power generation capacity would make the biggest contribution to growth.

Despite potentially huge gains to be made from boosting productive infrastructure, there remain substantial challenges across all sectors. Among these, the main is the lack of a regional vision for infrastructure provision, even though it remains one of the critical determinants of success. Recently, some efforts have been made towards a regional vision; however it is still too early to assess their real impact and success. For example, the East African Community developed a master plan for the energy sector aiming to achieve a regional vision that goes beyond the power system capacity supporting an institutional arrangement.

Social infrastructure: access to water and sanitation, and electricity

Water and sanitation

East Africa's overall result for access to improved water sources falls behind other economic communities. Although urban areas present a positive trend in most East African countries, there is still a significant differential between urban and rural areas (about 35 percentage points on average). On a positive note, internal disparities between lagging and leading areas within single countries are narrowing.

East Africa's overall performance for access to improved water had shown an improvement of 10 percentage points between 2005 and 2010. No other community has shown such an improvement (see Figure 9.1 and Table 9.1). Nevertheless, gaps persist.