Infrastructure Foundations: From Current Assets to Future Growth
Infrastructure lies at the heart of development. Reliable energy systems, efficient transport networks, and robust digital connectivity are essential for economic growth, job creation, social inclusion, and resilience.
This report presents the first exhaustive global database on physical infrastructure assets, covering energy generation capacity, transmission lines, roads, railways, and digital infrastructure such as cell towers, data centers, and fiber-optic cables. Assets are geolocated at detailed administrative levels, enabling fine-grained spatial analysis of infrastructure gaps. The resulting data set supports a comprehensive global assessment of infrastructure stocks, costs, and social returns across more than 150 countries.
Building on this evidence, the report develops a policy framework to guide infrastructure investment decisions. The framework allows policy makers to identify infrastructure gaps and prioritize investments under resource constraints. It estimates social rates of return at the country–sector level and compares them with countries’ borrowing costs to derive efficiency ratios. This approach helps assess whether investment in a given sector is justified and how returns compare across sectors.
