The Democratic Republic of Congo's Infrastructure : A Continental Perspective

Foster, Vivien ; Benitez, Daniel Alberto

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY;    ACCESSIBILITY;    AIR;    AIR ROUTES;    AIR SERVICES;   

RP-ID  :  62386

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The Africa Infrastructure CountryDiagnostic (AICD) has gathered and analyzed extensive dataon infrastructure in around 40 Sub-Saharan countries,including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Theresults have been presented in reports covering differentareas of infrastructure ICT, irrigation, power, transport,water and sanitation and different policy areas, includinginvestment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance.This report presents the key AICD findings for the DRC,allowing the country's infrastructure situation to bebenchmarked against that of its African peers. Given thatthe DRC is a fragile state trying to catch up with otherlow-income countries (LICs) in the region, bothfragile-state and LIC African benchmarks will be used toevaluate the DRC's situation. Detailed comparisons willalso be made with immediate regional neighbors in CentralAfrica. Several methodological issues should be borne inmind. First, because of the cross-country nature of datacollection, a time lag is inevitable. The period covered bythe AICD runs from 2001 to 2006. Most technical datapresented are for 2006 (or the most recent year available),while financial data are typically averaged over theavailable period to smooth out the effect of short-termfluctuations. Second, in order to make comparisons acrosscountries, indicators had to be standardized to place theanalysis on a consistent basis. This means that some of theindicators presented here may be slightly different fromthose that are routinely reported and discussed at thecountry level. During the period from 2001 to 2005, percapita economic growth in DRC was on average 2.1 percenthigher than during the period from 1991 to 1995. Despitethis improvement, growth levels, which oscillated between 4and 8 percent in the early 2000s, still fell short of thesustained 7 percent per year needed to meet the MillenniumDevelopment Goals (MDGs). Improved telecommunicationsinfrastructure has been the main driver of this change,contributing 1.1 percentage points to the country's percapita growth rate. Deficiencies in power infrastructure, onthe other hand, held back per capita growth by 0.25percentage point over this period.