The North African countries are expanding their construction sector with several active high-value projects with approximately US$473bn investment, shows BNC Project Intelligence?s recent market analysis
Some of the projects include Capital Cairo in Egypt worth US$45bn and the Industrial Park in Morocco worth US$10bn that indicate a healthy pipeline of fresh other project investments in the countries.
According to the report, Egypt constitutes a majority of 71 per cent of the total project investments in North Africa following the announcements of some major projects on urban construction and utilities sectors, which have a combined value of nearly US$300bn of all project investments in the region.
After the socio-economic instability in 2011, the construction market in North Africa has been making big advances with a six-year estimated growth rate of approximately 20 per cent. New investment opportunities are opening up as geopolitical tensions gradually ease and governments rebuild their economies to a large scale.
Given the environment of low oil prices in the Middle East and African regions, and other socio-economic factors, governments started making higher investments in various other sectors such as urban construction, utilities, tourism, etc. to boost up economic stability in the region.
North African countries are experiencing a higher rate of population increase in the last few years. This led to urbanisation which drives many of the construction projects in the region. The demand for infrastructure and housing is growing in highly urbanised countries such as Algeria and in densely populated cities such as Cairo. This population increase drives the demand for construction activities in areas like infrastructure, residential and commercial properties, hospitality and healthcare.
Governments? investment in the utilities sector to address the pressing constraints of the existing powers systems such as planned outages and load shedding are set to develop the infrastructure system, thereby leading more investment in the construction market. In addition, various technological innovations such as renewable power, energy become more economical and widespread use in the region and add value to the growth of North Africa?s construction market.
The build-up and improvements of facilities and infrastructures in different industries create a more efficient operating environment for enhancing business activities. Governments? investment in tourism and hospitality diversify economic movement in North Africa, which, in a way, led to the development of construction business. Morocco has invested in the tourism sector with an aim to become a top-20 tourism destination by 2020, and Tunisia has invested in areas of medical and cultural tourism and ecosystem, thereby attracting foreign investors and private contractors in the business of construction market in North Africa.
