USAKA, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- A senior World Bank official has said integration efforts for Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) requires a spending of 5.5 billion U.S. dollars over the next decade, the Zambia Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

Countries in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been working at integrating their programs, saying there was a lot of duplication of each other programs.

World Bank Senior Economist Vivien Foster said in Lusaka on Monday that water, transport, power and information and communication technology were some of the illustrative targets for regional integration in ESA over the next decade.

The World Bank official said there was need to upgrade the regional the road network to good quality and that there was need for countries to complete regional transmission network to allow power trade and develop large-scale regional hydro-power projects.

She further said countries in the region should complete the missing kilometers optic fiber backbone network, giving all landlocked countries two alternative routes to submarine cables and added though the region had a relatively advanced air transport market, but has still a long way to go on liberalization and surveillance safety.?