General Electric Co. booked $2.5 billion of orders from sub-Saharan Africa in the past 11 months, including oil and gas equipment for Eni SpA in Ghana and locomotives for Angola.
That figure is $500 million more than the company targeted by 2018 during a U.S.-African leader summit last August, Jay Ireland, chief executive officer for GE Africa, said Friday in an interview in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. They will be delivered “over the next two years,” he said.
Orders from the 25 African nations where GE operates range from items for transportation to oil and gas, power generation, health care and aviation, according to Ireland.
GE expects to seek financing for projects worth at least $1.5 billion in Africa each year as it expands its footprint in a region increasing investment in infrastructure development, and exploitation of its natural resources, he said.
The announcement coincides with U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya, where he addressed the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi earlier on Saturday.
Economic growth across Africa is set to accelerate to 5 percent in 2016 from an estimated 4.5 percent this year, when foreign direct investment will rise to $73.5 billion, according to the African Development Bank. The inflows may help narrow a funding gap for infrastructure development on the continent that the World Bank estimates at $93 billion a year.
Source: Fuel Fix
