Infrastructure Brief is an independent news website founded by a group of editors and media entrepreneurs who perceived the need for greater public awareness and scrutiny of how public funds, taxpayer funds, and funding obtained by sovereign borrowing were being spent on major public works projects in Africa.
We started this news website based on a vision that Africa is undergoing a radical transformation before our eyes.
There is a changing playing field in terms of development financing. Over the past ten years, China’s investment in major ambitious infrastructure projects including dams, roads, airports, and hospitals has soared from just 2% of US spending to 55%. It is expected that within the next ten years that China’s investment in Africa will outpace that of the United States and Europe.
What does this mean for Africans? Surely there is some benefit and also costs to be aware of, and crucial decisions that we must make as a continent to ensure we have a sustainable path to development among many partners while making genuine efforts to expunge the graft and corruption from the public procurement process.
This is where Infrastructure Brief comes in. We want to work together with journalists and citizens and whistleblowers from all across Africa to understand what is happening in these often opaque public tenders, to bring light to major public works projects, and to understand who are the good faith investors and contractors and who are causing us damage.
The news we publish here will not always be popular. But it will be necessary for our future.