Sub-Saharan Africa's two decades of unprecedented economic performance beginning in mid-1990, coined as Africa Rising, was characterized by many countries in the region growing at a rate that exceeded 5 percent per year. Africa Rising's earlier narrative attributes the region's rapid growth to external tailwinds, progress in macroeconomic management, and robust public investment. As economies in the region decelerated in the post-crisis period, there was a significant countercyclical effort to support aggregate demand among countries in the region, which was partly reflected in a large increase in public investment. For instance, the cumulative increase in public investment exceeded 5 percentage points of GDP in Togo, Guinea, and Ethiopia during 2008-15.
This section first documents stylized facts on public investment in Sub-Saharan Africa: (a) trends in public investment compared with other regions and across subregions in Sub-Saharan Africa, (b) the interplay between public and private investment (whether public investment crowds in or crowds out private investment), and (c) the behavior of public investment along the business cycle (whether public investment has been pro- or counter-cyclical). Next, the section takes a preliminary look at capital spending on infrastructure across 24 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, using the BOOST program. This initiative takes a granular approach to government accounts and uncovers information on capital spending as well as capital allocations-which enables us to distinguish actual expenditure and the extent of under-execution of investment programs. Finally, the section takes stock of PPPs in infrastructure in the region, focusing not only on the uptake of this mode of financing, but also the country and sectoral breakdowns, project types, structure of financing, type of support from the government or multilateral development banks, and revenue sources, among others.