The Role of the Private Sector in Development: Interview with CEO of Siemens Africa, Sigi Proebstl

The Coordination Team recently had the opportunity to chat with Sigi Proebstl, the CEO of Siemens Africa on his view of the company's development role in Africa:

With a presence in Africa for over 150 years, the global engineering and technology company, Siemens, considers itself to be in pole position to help tackle Africa’s major challenges across the key sectors of industry, energy and healthcare.  They recently opened a unit dedicated entirely to urban development. “We’re part of the African family,” said CEO of Siemens Africa, Sigi Proebstl, “and the opportunities for everyone going forward are immense.”

“And today in Africa there is a demand,” he said. “This demand is huge.”

This long-standing history in Africa has allowed  the benefit of learning from early mistakes to bring forward best practice for working in developing situations. Proebstl has witnessed the company’s growing responsibility as a development partner. Last year, to complement its energy, industry and healthcare units, Siemens dedicated a fourth unit to infrastructure and urban development. 

“Ten to fifteen years ago urbanisation was not a topic - only 20 per cent of African people lived in cities. Now we are reaching a point where 50 per cent are living in cities.  We have the worldwide trend where by 2040, 75 per cent of world populations will be living in cities.  We have to manage it now, otherwise we will run into a city disaster,” he said.

Siemens is working across Africa – and the world - as a partner to city governments to assist in making cities more livable. Last year, the company surveyed for the greenest city in Africa. Accra in Ghana along with Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban in South Africa, Casablanca in Morocco and Tunis in Tunisia were the best performing cities in the African Green City Index. 

Proebstl considers that there were no losers. “All the cities were on different levels already of achievement and the most important thing was they agreed to move forwards.  We have shining examples, for example, in Cape Town, but we also have an example in Lagos of what can we do better.  We have a huge organisation in Nigeria, and we want to be the partner with the government there to make things better.”

He said that the Siemens broad based company portfolio is well equipped to assist in sustainable city management, with infrastructure to link cities, with building management, traffic management, even pedestrian management. 

“Now we have established a unit called Infrastructure in Cities, so we are a frontrunner.  This sector will concentrate solely on infrastructure in cities so they will be the right partner for the major but also for all the decision makers in the towns to give the right answers to burning development questions,” he explained.

“In 2014, sustainable business in our portfolio will be more than 40 billion euros,” he continued. “Our aim is be a sustainable company and a partner for our cities and countries, and to be reliable.  Most of our projects are not short term – you can’t solve problems in a one to two year frame, you need a partner to be there in 15,20 – even 50 years.”

Renewable energy is high on the agenda across the Continent, where Siemens is involved with large-scale wind energy and photovoltaic projects. In Morocco, in hand with the Government, Siemens is involved with developing one of the largest wind parks in the world. “The King of Morocco is very much on the environment’s side and the sustainability side.  We want to create win-win situations through sustainability,” said Proebstl. 

“The question is, what we can do better for the achievements of the countries, and what can we do for the cities,” he stressed.

He considers that development partners have two important roles.  “To provide a platform for dialogue, after which there must be action. Secondly, we need to come together for finance, which can be done out of the EU, local governments but also the World Bank, the China Development Bank  - whoever - and again, this is a platform; if they push in the financing direction, in this league, that will be perfect.”