Africa: Second annual PIDA Week on infrastructure development in Abidjan
Abidjan hosted the second annual PIDA Week, an event promoted by the African Development Bank to present the Programme for Infrastructure Development (PIDA). in Africa. This year’s event was organized under the theme, “Creating Jobs through Regional Infrastructure Development.” The week comprised four thematic sessions and namely: Pida Energy; PIDA ICT ; Pida Transport ; Pida Water. The programme has a value of nearly 21 billion dollars, of which 12 billion dollars will be allocated to the energy sector and 9 billion dollars to the establishment and upgrade of intra-regional corridors to improve the infrastructure network with a view to increasing commercial trade in Africa. Since February 2016, one of PIDA’s priorities has been the creation or transformation of intra-regional corridors into “Smart (Safety, Mobility, Automated, Real-time Traffic Management) Corridors” to optimise commercial transport and favour contacts among the countries in the continent.
Turkey: Islamic Development Bank allocates 334 mln dollars for high-speed trains
The Islamic Development Bank will allocate 312 million euros (334 million dollars) to finance the building of 10 high-speed trains, which will run on the Ankara-Istanbul route. According to the Bank, the new project is designed to divert the heavy passenger traffic on the Ankara-to -stanbul route from road to rail, and to meet the transport demand that is expected to grown from the current 5.6 milion passengers to 13.9 million by 2025.
