Hon Speaker, hon members, the Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative, falling within the ambit of the African Union, AU, in terms of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, Nepad, is aimed at achieving regional integration and improving trade amongst African states.
Trade on the continent is constrained by a number of factors. These include the inadequacy of infrastructure such as road, rail and communication networks, differences in trade regimes, restrictive customs procedures, as well as inadequate skills and finance.
The Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative committee comprises eight heads of state and governments under South Africa's leadership. It cuts across various industry sectors, such as transport, energy, technology, water and sanitation, as well as agriculture.
South Africa champions the North-South Corridor road and rail projects. This corridor stretches from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, across the Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to South Africa.
We have conducted an assessment of the roads and the railways to get a sense of what needs to be fixed, in order to allow the free flow of goods, people and services. We are making progress. For example, we have freed the movement of trucks in Kazungula in Zambia. The border post was redesigned, which improved, among other things, the processing of documents and other administrative bottlenecks.
We have also identified Beitbridge as another area that has huge constraints. The traffic jams slow down the movement of people and trucks between Zimbabwe and South Africa, which increases the costs of moving goods.
The three regional economic communities - the Southern African Development Community, SADC; the East African Community; and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Comesa - are key partners in improving road and rail infrastructure, as well as issues pertaining to border posts and ports in their respective regions and countries. We have identified them as key partners in this programme.
Amongst the challenges is to further improve and strengthen co-ordination amongst the member states. Other issues we are looking at include funding methods for the projects and getting more private-sector investments into the projects.
We are committed to making this succeed, given the importance of infrastructure for Africa's growth and development. I thank you, hon Speaker. [Applause.]