Giving Compass' Take:

• Genevieve Jesse and Payce Madden at Brookings report on research and figures of African countries that are suffering the most from poor infrastructure and state that government intervention is necessary. 

• Filling Africa’s infrastructure needs will likely require consistent efforts to improve government capacity to manage infrastructure. How can donors help drive African policymakers into action? 

• Here's an article on making globalization work for Africa. 

Last week, the World Bank released the report “Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity” to highlight the challenges fragile countries and communities face from infrastructure disruptions. These disruptions impact service delivery and harm the people who experience them, particularly when caused by natural disasters.

Figure 1 shows the outsized impact of infrastructure challenges faced by small and medium enterprises in countries with lower GDP per capita. Enterprises in lower-income countries face significantly more electricity and water outages per month than those in higher-income countries; these outages lower enterprises’ productivity and increase costs. Unpredictable but frequent electricity outages are particularly expensive to overcome: According to the report, firms in low- and middle-income countries currently face costs of $300 billion per year from reduced utilization rates due to outages. These costs create barriers for firms to enter markets and increase the risks of entrepreneurship, ultimately affecting household income growth, consumption, and vulnerability to macroeconomic shocks.

Read the full article about Africa's infrastructure by Genevieve Jesse and Payce Madden at Brookings.