CAIRO, May 24 (AFP) - The African Development Bank (ADB) pledged Monday to press on with promoting private investment to raise some of the 250 billion dollars needed to improve the continent's infrastructure in the next decade. The ADB will support "greater involvement of the private sector" in infrastructure projects as it continues a recent shift from focusing only on public funding, ADB President Omar Kabbaj told a symposium here. Few countries, he said, have the means to build all the new airports, deepwater ports, roads, power grids and telecommunications networks needed to help Africa export its products to world markets and ease poverty. And delegates at the symposium, held on the eve of the ADB's annual board meetings, said more private investment was flowing to Africa, partly because investors took a second look at the continent after the Asian financial crisis. They pointed to promising opportunities in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco in North Africa as well as in the Ivory Coast and Nigeria in West Africa. But Kabbaj, a Moroccan, described as "daunting" the needs for infrastructure investment in Africa, which he said stood at five to six percent of Gross Domestic Product, or more than 250 billion dollars in the next decade. Private capital flows to Africa improved to 7.1 billion dollars last year, compared to 2.3 billion dollars in 1990, according to ADB figures. A Western investment agency expert here said 250 billion dollars was a "reasonable" figure for the scale of the continent's backlog of projects and could not imagine them being carried out in 10 years. The bank, with shareholders comprising 53 countries in Africa and 23 from outside, "will use various financial instruments ranging from direct equity investment and loans to guarantees," Kabbaj said, reading from an official text. The ADB, which works with the World Bank and other international and national investment agencies, has a current portfolio of 266 million dollars designed for private sector infrastructure projects. Governments have much work to do to attract business involvement, such as improving administrative and legal frameworks as well as strengthening financial markets, Kabbaj and delegates said. The ADB promised to provide its expertise. Although public and private partnerships started with management contracts and lease arrangements, the private sector is now playing a greater role through direct investments and joint ventures, Kabbaj said. "This is particularly the case in the telecommunications and power sectors," he added. Simon Riggall, regional managing director for global project finance at Citibank in London, identified Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco as attractive for financing in the power sector because of privatization. He also expressed optimism for the power and telecommunication sectors in the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. "There are also lots of (investment) opportunities in South Africa," he added. Ian Golden, chief executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, said privatization was moving rapidly on the continent and the Asian crisis served as an "awakening" for investors to look again at Africa. But Africa lags far behind the rest of the world in infrastructure. For example, the number of telephone lines per 100 people averages two in Africa, compared to six in Asia and 30 in the Americas and Europe. Annual growth rates of six to eight percent are needed to alleviate poverty, but that is not likely soon, ADB officials say. However, African economies have grown at average of four percent from 1996-98, an improvement over previous years.  