Publication: Zimbabwe’s Infrastructure : A Continental Perspective
Loading...
Date
2011-09-01
ISSN
Published
2011-09-01
Editor(s)
Abstract
Despite general economic decline and power-supply deficiencies, infrastructure made a modest net contribution of just less than half a percentage point to Zimbabwe's improved per capita growth performance in recent years. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by about 2.4 percentage points. Zimbabwe made significant progress in infrastructure in its early period as an independent state, building a national electricity network with regional interconnections, an extensive and internationally connected road network, and a water and sewer system. But the country has been unable to maintain its existing infrastructure since it became immersed in economic and political turmoil in the late 1990s. Zimbabwe now faces a number of important infrastructure challenges, the most pressing of which lie in the power and water sectors, where deteriorating conditions pose risks to the economy and public health. Zimbabwe currently spends about $0.8 billion per year on infrastructure, though $0.7 billion of this is lost to inefficiencies of various kinds. Even if these inefficiencies were fully captured, Zimbabwe would still face an infrastructure funding gap of $0.6 billion per year. That staggering figure can be reduced, however, to $0.4 billion if the country adopts a more modest spending scenario, or even to $0.1 billion under a minimalist, maintenance-only scenario. To close the gap, Zimbabwe needs to raise additional public, private-sector, and international funding, which, when coupled with the prospect of economic rebound and prudent policies, would allow the country to regain its historic infrastructure advantages.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Pushak, Nataliya; Briceno-Garmendia, Cecilia M.. 2011. Zimbabwe’s Infrastructure : A Continental Perspective. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5816. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3601 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Geopolitics and the World Trading System(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-23)Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their trade policy choices. Now heightened geopolitical rivalry seems to have undermined the WTO. A simple transposition of the previous rationalization suggests that geopolitics and trade cooperation are not compatible. The paper shows that this is only true if rivalry eclipses any consideration of own-country well-being. In all other circumstances, there are gains from trade cooperation even with geopolitics. Furthermore, the WTO’s relevance is in question only if it adheres too rigidly to its existing rules and norms. Through measured adaptation to the geopolitical imperative, the WTO can continue to thrive as a forum for multilateral trade cooperation in the age of geopolitics.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication From Patriarchy to Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Legal institutions play an important role in shaping gender equality in economic domains, from inheritance to labor markets. But where do gender equal laws come from? Using cross-country data on social norms and legal equality, this paper investigates the socio-cultural roots of gender inequity in the legal system and its implications for female labor force participation. To identify the impact of social norms, the analysis uses an empirical strategy that exploits pre-modern differences in ancestral patriarchal culture as an instrument for present-day gender norms. The findings show that ancestral patriarchal culture is a strong predictor of contemporary norms, and conservative social norms are associated with more gender inequality in the de jure legal framework, the de facto implementation of laws, and the labor market. The paper presents evidence for a political selection mechanism linking norms to laws: countries with more conservative norms elect political leaders who are more hostile to gender equality, who then pass less progressive legislation. The results highlight the cultural roots and political drivers of legalized gender inequality.Publication Global Socio-economic Resilience to Natural Disasters(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-22)Most disaster risk assessments use damages to physical assets as their central metric, often neglecting distributional impacts and the coping and recovery capacity of affected people. To address this shortcoming, the concepts of well-being losses and socio-economic resilience—the ability to experience asset losses without a decline in well-being—have been proposed. This paper uses microsimulations to produce a global estimate of well-being losses from, and socio-economic resilience to, natural disasters, covering 132 countries. On average, each $1 in disaster-related asset losses results in well-being losses equivalent to a $2 uniform national drop in consumption, with significant variation within and across countries. The poorest income quintile within each country incurs only 9% of national asset losses but accounts for 33% of well-being losses. Compared to high-income countries, low-income countries experience 67% greater well-being losses per dollar of asset losses and require 56% more time to recover. Socio-economic resilience is uncorrelated with exposure or vulnerability to natural hazards. However, a 10 percent increase in GDP per capita is associated with a 0.9 percentage point gain in resilience, but this benefit arises indirectly—such as through higher rate of formal employment, better financial inclusion, and broader social protection coverage—rather than from higher income itself. This paper assess ten policy options and finds that socio-economic and financial interventions (such as insurance and social protection) can effectively complement asset-focused measures (e.g., construction standards) and that interventions targeting low-income populations usually have higher returns in terms of avoided well-being losses per dollar invested.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Zimbabwe's Infrastructure(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-03)Despite general economic decline and power supply deficiencies, infrastructure made a modest net contribution of less than half a percentage point to Zimbabwe's improved per capita growth performance in recent years. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by about 2.4 percentage points. Zimbabwe made significant progress in infrastructure in its early period as an independent state. The country managed to put in place a national electricity network and establish regional interconnection in the power sector; to build an extensive network of roads for countrywide accessibility and integration into the regional transport corridors; to lay the water and sewerage system; and to make progress on building dams and tapping the significant irrigation potential. Unfortunately, at present the cross-cutting issue across all these sectors is Zimbabwe's inability to maintain and rehabilitate the existing infrastructure since the country became immersed in economic and political turmoil in the late 1990s. Neglect of all sectors due to the crisis has resulted in a generalized lack of new investment (in the power and water sectors in particular), and the accumulation of a huge rehabilitation agenda. Quality of service has declined across the board. The power system has become unjustifiably costly, inefficient, and unreliable. The condition of roads has deteriorated to the point that Zimbabwe became a bottleneck on the North-South transport corridor. Rural connectivity hardly exists. Failure to treat potable water, along with the deterioration of the water, sanitation, and garbage disposal systems, was responsible for the spread of cholera in 2008. By 2010 cholera affected most areas of the country and posed a health threat to neighboring countries. Looking ahead, Zimbabwe faces a number of important infrastructure challenges. Zimbabwe's most pressing challenges lie in the power and water sectors. Inefficient and unreliable power supply poses major risks to the economy, while the maintenance and upgrading of existing power infrastructure no longer looks to be affordable. At the same time, overhauling the water and sewerage system is imperative for curbing the public health crisis.Publication The Republic of Congo’s Infrastructure : A Continental Perspective(2011-10-01)Infrastructure contributed half a percentage point to the Republic of Congo's annual per capita GDP growth from 2001 to 2006. If the country's infrastructure were improved to the level seen in Mauritius, the regional leader, it could contribute more than 3 percentage points to annual per capita growth. The Republic of Congo's existing infrastructure is concentrated in the developed south, reflecting the country's urbanization patterns. Links spread from there to the less-developed north, where there are vast areas of underexploited dense forest. The Republic of Congo's power sector offers the greatest potential for infrastructure-based economic growth, but major inefficiencies need to be addressed. Transit improvements would also make significant contributions to growth by improving connections to the north and to neighboring countries. Additional opportunities include rehabilitating the fixed-line telephone operator to spread Internet access. The country's water and sanitation infrastructure is in relatively good shape. Spending on infrastructure was $460 million per year in the Republic of Congo during the mid-2000s. Based on these spending levels, if all inefficiencies were eliminated, the country would face an infrastructure funding gap of $270 million a year and would not meet infrastructure targets for 31 years. Spending rose to $550 million per year in 2008-09. If the Republic of Congo could maintain these higher spending levels, the funding gap would essentially disappear. The nation could further reduce the funding gap by adopting lower-cost technologies to meet infrastructure targets.Publication The Republic of Congo's Infrastructure(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-03)Upgrading infrastructure plays a critical role in the Republic of Congo's quest to diversify its economy and reduce poverty. It is also an important source of growth on its own. A cross-country statistical analysis conducted for this report shows that infrastructure contributed one-half of one percentage point to the Republic of Congo's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth annually from 2001 to 2006. However, if the country's infrastructure could be improved to the level seen in Mauritius, the leading country in Sub-Saharan Africa, it could contribute more than 3 percentage points to annual per capita growth. The Republic of Congo's power infrastructure is inadequate and inefficiently operated. The country lags well behind peer countries in generation capacity and electrification. The parts of the population not served by the grid face exorbitant costs. The government has responded to these issues with an ambitious investment plan. However, if new assets are to operate effectively, major inefficiencies in the power utility will also need to be addressed. The utility's transmission and distribution losses are 47 percent, more than double best-practice benchmarks, while the cost of overstaffing is 30 percent of utility revenue. Tariffs recover barely half the cost of service provision, even though full cost recovery will be affordable to the population. In the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, the Republic of Congo has made good progress in developing its mobile telephony market in recent years, with high levels of signal coverage. The cost of international connectivity is currently high, but it should fall once the country connects to the international submarine cable and completes its domestic fiber optic network. On the other hand, the physically dilapidated and financially depleted condition of the fixed-line telephone operator is becoming a constraint to raising Internet penetration. The Republic of Congo performs relatively well on service coverage in the water and sanitation sector. The country's access statistics are substantially ahead of those in its peer group, particularly with regard to piped water, stand-posts, and improved latrines. However, access to services is much greater in urban areas than in rural areas. Furthermore, under-pricing of water has hurt the financial soundness of the water utility, even though analysis suggests that cost recovery tariffs would be affordable to consumers.Publication Côte d’Ivoire’s Infrastructure : A Continental Perspective(2011-03-01)Infrastructure contributed 1.8 percentage points to Cote d'Ivoire's annual per capita GDP growth over the mid-2000s before conflict began to erase the country's infrastructure and its growth contributions. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to the level of the region's middle-income countries could boost the growth rate by a further 2 percentage points. Private sector contracts signed in the 1990s resulted in improved operational performance and funding for investments in the water, power, transport, and ICT sectors. Impressively, those contracts survived the crisis and delivered uninterrupted service. But private investment flows have decreased since the mid-2000s. Cote d'Ivoire's most pressing infrastructural challenge will be to regain the financial equilibrium needed to restore a reliable energy supply. Reestablishing the prominence of Abidjan's port will require investments in terminal capacity and road and rail infrastructure upgrades on hinterland linkages. The underfunding of road maintenance and poor sanitation are additional challenges. Cote d'Ivoire's annual infrastructure spending was $750 million in the mid-2000s, with going to power sector operations and maintenance. If the underpricing of power and other inefficiencies (valued at $200 million annually) were eliminated, the country s annual infrastructure funding gap would amount to $1 billion, and infrastructure goals could be reached within 20 years. Cote d'Ivoire's has relatively good prospects for bridging its funding gap by raising public investment from its low current level, choosing more efficient technologies, and harnessing additional private investment for infrastructure.Publication Côte d’Ivoire’s Infrastructure(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-03)This study is a product of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project designed to expand the world's knowledge of physical infrastructure in Africa. Infrastructure contributed 1.8 percentage points to Cote d'Ivoire's annual per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the mid-2000. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by a further two percentage points per capita. Cote d'Ivoire made major strides with respect to infrastructure during the 1990s. As a result, the country has broad-reaching national backbones in the road, energy, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sectors, and relatively high levels of household coverage for utility services. However, much ground was lost to conflict in the mid-2000s. Very little investment has taken place in the last fifteen years, leading to recent power shortages, the deterioration of the road network, and the deceleration of progress on safe water access. Cote d'Ivoire's most pressing challenge will be to regain the financial equilibrium needed to restore a reliable energy supply. Reestablishing the prominence of Abidjan's port will require investments in terminal capacity, as well as road and rail infrastructure upgrades on hinterland linkages. The underfunding of road maintenance must also be addressed. Another challenge lies in sanitation, as it is currently unlikely that the country will meet the associated millennium development goal. This report presents the key AICD findings for Cote d'Ivoire, allowing the country's infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of its African peers. A social and economic crisis in Cote d'Ivoire has crippled its growth trajectory, which had been that of a middle-income country. It will therefore be compared to low-income countries (fragile and non-fragile groups) and middle-income countries, as well as immediate regional neighbors in West Africa. The study presented several methodological issues.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication South Asia Development Update, April 2024: Jobs for Resilience(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-02)South Asia is expected to continue to be the fastest-growing emerging market and developing economy (EMDE) region over the next two years. This is largely thanks to robust growth in India, but growth is also expected to pick up in most other South Asian economies. However, growth in the near-term is more reliant on the public sector than elsewhere, whereas private investment, in particular, continues to be weak. Efforts to rein in elevated debt, borrowing costs, and fiscal deficits may eventually weigh on growth and limit governments' ability to respond to increasingly frequent climate shocks. Yet, the provision of public goods is among the most effective strategies for climate adaptation. This is especially the case for households and farms, which tend to rely on shifting their efforts to non-agricultural jobs. These strategies are less effective forms of climate adaptation, in part because opportunities to move out of agriculture are limited by the region’s below-average employment ratios in the non-agricultural sector and for women. Because employment growth is falling short of working-age population growth, the region fails to fully capitalize on its demographic dividend. Vibrant, competitive firms are key to unlocking the demographic dividend, robust private investment, and workers’ ability to move out of agriculture. A range of policies could spur firm growth, including improved business climates and institutions, the removal of financial sector restrictions, and greater openness to trade and capital flows.Publication Media and Messages for Nutrition and Health(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has experienced rapid and significant economic growth over the past decade. However, poor nutritional outcomes remain a concern. Rates of childhood undernutrition are particularly high in remote, rural, and upland areas. Media have the potential to play an important role in shaping health and nutrition–related behaviors and practices as well as in promoting sociocultural and economic development that might contribute to improved nutritional outcomes. This report presents the results of a media audit (MA) that was conducted to inform the development and production of mass media advocacy and communication strategies and materials with a focus on maternal and child health and nutrition that would reach the most people from the poorest communities in northern Lao PDR. Making more people aware of useful information, essential services and products and influencing them to use these effectively is the ultimate goal of mass media campaigns, and the MA measures the potential effectiveness of media efforts to reach this goal. The effectiveness of communication channels to deliver health and nutrition messages to target beneficiaries to ensure maximum reach and uptake can be viewed in terms of preferences, satisfaction, and trust. Overall, the four most accessed media channels for receiving information among communities in the study areas were village announcements, mobile phones, television, and out-of-home (OOH) media. Of the accessed media channels, the top three most preferred channels were village announcements (40 percent), television (26 percent), and mobile phones (19 percent). In terms of trust, village announcements were the most trusted source of information (64 percent), followed by mobile phones (14 percent) and television (11 percent). Hence of all the media channels, village announcements are the most preferred, have the most satisfied users, and are the most trusted source of information in study communities from four provinces in Lao PDR with some of the highest burden of childhood undernutrition.Publication Remarks at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-12)World Bank Group President David Malpass discussed biodiversity and climate change being closely interlinked, with terrestrial and marine ecosystems serving as critically important carbon sinks. At the same time climate change acts as a direct driver of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss. The World Bank has financed biodiversity conservation around the world, including over 116 million hectares of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas, 10 million hectares of Terrestrial Protected Areas, and over 300 protected habitats, biological buffer zones and reserves. The COVID pandemic, biodiversity loss, climate change are all reminders of how connected we are. The recovery from this pandemic is an opportunity to put in place more effective policies, institutions, and resources to address biodiversity loss.Publication The Journey Ahead(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-31)The Journey Ahead: Supporting Successful Migration in Europe and Central Asia provides an in-depth analysis of international migration in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and the implications for policy making. By identifying challenges and opportunities associated with migration in the region, it aims to inform a more nuanced, evidencebased debate on the costs and benefits of cross-border mobility. Using data-driven insights and new analysis, the report shows that migration has been an engine of prosperity and has helped address some of ECA’s demographic and socioeconomic disparities. Yet, migration’s full economic potential remains untapped. The report identifies multiple barriers keeping migration from achieving its full potential. Crucially, it argues that policies in both origin and destination countries can help maximize the development impacts of migration and effectively manage the economic, social, and political costs. Drawing from a wide range of literature, country experiences, and novel analysis, The Journey Ahead presents actionable policy options to enhance the benefits of migration for destination and origin countries and migrants themselves. Some measures can be taken unilaterally by countries, whereas others require close bilateral or regional coordination. The recommendations are tailored to different types of migration— forced displacement as well as high-skilled and low-skilled economic migration—and from the perspectives of both sending and receiving countries. This report serves as a comprehensive resource for governments, development partners, and other stakeholders throughout Europe and Central Asia, where the richness and diversity of migration experiences provide valuable insights for policy makers in other regions of the world.Publication Economic Recovery(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-06)World Bank Group President David Malpass spoke about the world facing major challenges, including COVID, climate change, rising poverty and inequality and growing fragility and violence in many countries. He highlighted vaccines, working closely with Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF, the World Bank has conducted over one hundred capacity assessments, many even more before vaccines were available. The World Bank Group worked to achieve a debt service suspension initiative and increased transparency in debt contracts at developing countries. The World Bank Group is finalizing a new climate change action plan, which includes a big step up in financing, building on their record climate financing over the past two years. He noted big challenges to bring all together to achieve GRID: green, resilient, and inclusive development. Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, mentioned focusing on vulnerable people during the pandemic. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, focused on giving everyone a fair shot during a sustainable recovery. All three commented on the importance of tackling climate change.