External partners could not be expected to appreciate the value of Africa “if we as Africans do not”, President Jacob Zuma said at the Bloomberg ‘Africa: Economic Outlook and Opportunities’ conference in Johannesburg on Monday, while underlining South Africa’s emergence as the single largest foreign direct investor (FDI) in the rest of Africa in 2012.

Speaking at a gathering attended by Bloomberg founder and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, Zuma said, since 2007, there had been a compound growth of 57% in South Africa-originated FDI projects into the rest of the Africa. “Our other partners on the continent, such as Nigeria, Kenya and increasingly Angola, are also taking up the cause of investing on the African continent. Intra-Africa investments should define the new Africa paradigm.”

Intra-Africa investment had grown at more than 32% since 2007, which Zuma said was more than double non-Africa emerging markets and almost fourfold faster than developed markets.

The address was made only days after Zuma returned for the African Union’s (AU’s) twenty-second summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the issue of stimulating greater levels of intra-African trade and investment was given priority, along with the perennial topics of peace and stability, food security and governance.

“It is mine and my government's belief that Africa's integration and intra-Africa trade cannot be realised without concerted efforts to invest in Africa's infrastructure and manufacturing sectors.”

Cross-border infrastructure received particular attention in Addis Ababa, with the African Development Bank (AfDB) signing a $9-million grant agreement with the African Union Commission ahead of the summit to help strengthen the capacity of African countries to plan, prepare and implement regional infrastructure programmes.

In addition, the meeting of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee, held on the eve of the summit, endorsed the AfDB’s ‘Africa50’ initiative, which would seek to mobilise private financing to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure in Africa.

Zuma said integration efforts, through the negotiation of the Tri-Partite Free Trade Agreement (T-FTA), were also “intensifying”. “We have made considerable progress in the negotiations, which aim to integrate 26 countries of Eastern and Southern Africa. This involves a population of nearly 600-million people and a combined gross domestic product of $1-trillion dollars.”

The T-FTA would form the basis, he added, for an Africa-wide agreement, which could create a single market of $2.6-trillion and a population of over 1-billion people. South Africa was pursuing what it had termed 'development integration', which was premised on market integration, infrastructure development and industrialisation.

Africa's rise, Zuma added, had been facilitated by broad-based growth over the past decade, which had led to a tripling in the size of the African economy has since 2000.

“This growth is predicted to continue in the foreseeable future, giving rise to a new Africa paradigm: Africa as the new growth frontier,” he said, while asserting that “potential investors are in the right continent at the right time”.