Zone Practices: Operations, Management, and Learning
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non-African zones. Across all countries, provision of child care services is limited (they are offered in only one zone in Bangladesh and about one-third of zones surveyed in Honduras and the Dominican Republic). Onsite housing for workers is extremely rare.
Infrastructure Too many African zone programs fail to deliver on basic infrastructure (such as utilities) inside the zones. Upfront investment in the core infrastructure is not enough; zones need to ensure that the authorities that control service delivery (e.g., electric companies, municipal water authorities) meet their obligations and are in a position to maintain the equipment. A fundamental promise of SEZs is to provide a quality operating environment by concentrating infrastructure investment in a defined area. The prospect of uninterrupted power and water are key criteria when investors consider location options. While some of the African zones (most notably Lesotho and, to some extent, Kenya) appear to offer fairly reliable infrastructure, infrastructure gaps have been a major cause of concern for investors in several of the zones. For example, Nigeria’s flagship Calabar zone has long had serious problems with electricity provision. According to its largest investor, the power crisis reached a peak in a week in May 2009, when production was run on generators for 115 hours out of 132 (i.e., 87%). The investor noted that even when power is delivered, its quality is so poor (low or high voltage) that it is of little use for the companies operating in the zone. A survey of companies in the zone indicated that all of them own or share generators and make extensive use of them. Interviews with investors in Ghana’s Tema zone indicated that several had been without water for more than a year and were forced to bring in water by tanker truck at a huge cost. In addition, although the zone invested in its own substation, power cuts were reported to be frequent, and investors said they rely on generators for 5–10 hours each day. Finally, two investors reported that in order to access a 2 megabyte (MB) broadband Internet connection, they pay a fee of US$5,000 a month. Such a fee is high enough to effectively shut out many prospective entrepreneurs in the IT or IT-enabled services field. Looking at the factors that contribute to these infrastructure gaps yields useful insights into what must be done to address them. In the case of Calabar in Nigeria, the zone apparently purchased state-ofthe-art equipment at the time of investment, but it was not properly