Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa

Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa analyzes the extent to which, how, and how fast the infrastructure needs of the poor have been met in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Wodon and Estache explore the extent to which some key policies have hurt or helped progress in trying to speed the expansions of coverage so clearly needed in the region. They focus on basic energy, telecoms, transport, and water and sanitation services at the core of the day-to-day needs of the population. The book has three main focuses-the macroeconomic dimensions of infrastructure, the poverty dimensions of infrastructure, and the policy dimensions of infrastructure. The authors take stock of and complement the existing evidence on the role of infrastructure in accelerating growth and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); they delve into basic quantitative facts of the performance of the sector in terms of access rates, affordability, quality and costs of delivering infrastructure services; they demonstrate how simple tools can be used for analytical purposes in order to improve poverty oriented diagnostics of infrastructure needs at the country level; and finally, they show how these tools can to be used to generate evidence on the impact of the main institutional, contractual and regulatory reforms in the sector of the last two decades.