President Jacob Zuma says African heads of state are committed to tackling the infrastructure bottlenecks that are blocking intra-Africa trade and investment.

Zuma was speaking at the Bloomberg “Africa: Economic Outlook and Opportunities” conference in Johannesburg this week. South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus were also present to discuss the economic outlook of the African continent.

According to Zuma, while intra-African investment had been growing at more than 32% since 2007, a lack of access to trade-enabling infrastructure on the continent remained a fundamental challenge. The president said the commitment to tackling the infrastructure bottleneck was made at the recent African Union Summit held in Ethiopia. “We recommitted ourselves as African heads of state to continue building cross-border infrastructure, to unlock growth and development in our continent,” he said.

The president also said that South Africa begun work on implementing the National Development Plan (NDP) which, among other things, commits the country to investing in a strong network of economic infrastructure designed to support the country’s medium and long-term economic and social objectives.”We are building roads, bridges, dams, schools, hospitals, universities, colleges and a lot of other infrastructure,” he said.

Zuma sees the South African government and private sector as having a critical role in Africa’s continued growth. “There is a need to redefine and to strengthen our partnerships on the continent towards realising the vision of an integrated Africa, underpinned by greater levels of intra-Africa trade and even greater levels of intra-Africa investments.”