Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat and President of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) Benedict Oramah launched an online platform for engineering, procurement and construction contracts, during the third edition of the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF), which is being held in Cairo under the patronage and presence of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
In her speech, the minister stated that the launch of the platform has great importance and impact on achieving Africa’s sustainable development agenda, as it enhances the participation of African companies in infrastructure projects, provides more investment opportunities, and facilitates the process of exchanging information. This expands the scope of partnerships and twinning agreements to drive growth in the engineering, construction and procurement sector, which was a demand of the leaders of the African continent, and this is the same thing that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, President of the Republic.
She highlighted the importance of achieving the required investment in Africa’s infrastructure with the help of the people of the continent and its companies.
She added that from this standpoint, the platform comes as a strategic and effective response to address three pivotal gaps that hinder benefiting from the African continent’s latent potential, which are the financing gap, information gap, and skills gap, especially since infrastructure financing gap on the continent is estimated at about $170bn annually.
She further disclosed that the online platform for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts works to address the financing gap by enhancing international cooperation. Additionally, attracting investments in the field of infrastructure, and bridging the information gap, by enhancing transparent communication between governments, the private sector, and international development partners, and addressing skills gap by providing technical support, capacity building and skills development to build a skilled workforce.
The Minister announced that the online platform for engineering, procurement and construction contracts will be linked to the Ministry of International Cooperation portal for private sector participation.
Further, the Minister of International Cooperation thanked the President of Afreximbank for the efforts made in launching the online platform for engineering, procurement and construction contracts, and the bank’s contribution to supporting the activity of engineering and contracting companies in Africa with contracts worth more than $12bn in the past five years.
Al-Mashat called on international development partners to provide more support and assistance to African companies to provide easy and low-cost development financing, more innovative mechanisms, and technical support necessary to implement infrastructure as well as green projects on the African continent.
