Infrastructure investment necessary for African development: S.African official

Infrastructure investment is very necessary for African development, said a senior official from the South African embassy to Jakarta on Tuesday.

Africa needs to develop the infrastructure, and therefore, Africa needs to invest in infrastructure, Pakamisa Augustine Sifuba, accreditation for Timor- Leste and ASEAN in South African Embassy, told Xinhua.

In Africa, most of the countries could not even trade between each other because of colonization, and "When we went to other African country, we need to go to Europe and then came back," he said on the sidelines of the Asian-African Business Summit ahead of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Asian-African Conference, also known as Bandung Conference.

"Now it's becoming very imperative for us to invest fast," he said, adding "We got a lot of support from China, BRICKS, which invest into African infrastructure and improve infrastructure."

"We are very proud of and appreciate the fact that the BRICKS bank has invested into infrastructure in Africa, which is a big push for our development," he said.

He hoped that there will be a similar mechanism such as the China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Africa.

"That's very useful for us, " he added. Endi