Africa's economic growth will slow down to about 2.5% this year - World Bank chief

Ahead of the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development, TICAD to be held this weekend in Nairobi, World Bank President,Jim Yong Kim revealed that Africa needs over $90 billion a year in investment in infrastructure.

Africa holds many opportunities for private-sector investment in infrastructure, Jim Yong Kim says. He emphasized that the multilateral finance group provides insurance and other tools to help mobilize capital.

Maintaining that it is wrong to “assume all the deals in Africa are risky.” “The role of the World Bank Group is to remove the risks on those investments. It’s our primary role when working with private sector companies,” he said.

Africa’s economic growth will slow down to around 2.5% this year, Kim further disclosed.

On this edition of TICAD, over 2000 people from the Japanese private sector are expected in Africa offering a huge opportunity to the continent.

Jim Yong Kim further revealed that “Japan has largely increased its foreign direct investment in Africa,” noting that “it still makes up less than 1% of total Japanese FDI.” “What we hope to be able to do is to really show to the private sector that there are more opportunities in Africa than they might think,” he said.

As regard updates on the African economy, Kim noted that Africa had an over 5% growth rate overall from 2008 until 2014.

The decade-long “commodity super cycle had helped commodity prices to stay lower for longer than anyone imagined according to Kim.

Kim emphasized the need for Africa to diversify. “They have to try to refine the ores or do something that would add value to the commodities that they’re exporting,” he said.

The TICAD VI Summit will be held at Kenyatta International Convention Center in Nairobi, Kenya on 27th -28th August 2016. This will be the first time TICAD is being held in Africa since its inception in 1993.