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. They connect people to employment clusters and markets, enable firms to compete and innovate, and allow societies to deliver basic services – from health and education to water and sanitation – at scale.

Yet across much of the developing world, large gaps in infrastructure access and quality persist, even as fiscal space remains constrained and investment needs continue to grow. "Infrastructure Foundations" 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 prioritise 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. The results indicate that, in most countries, investment opportunities in energy, transport, and digital sectors exceed borrowing costs, pointing to widespread underinvestment and the potential for a “big push,” especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the findings also highlight the importance of mixed investment strategies that leverage complementarities across infrastructure sectors. By grounding investment choices in transparent data and comparable metrics, the report aims to support better prioritisation, foster more informed policy dialogue, and help countries build durable infrastructure foundations for future development.

Report by the World Bank Group