CCA in the News: Summit aims to boost trade with Africa

This article appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA March 29 (AP) -- Ambassadors from about 30 African countries crowded around the Liberty Bell yesterday to announce a major conference in the city this fall on doing business with African countries.

The third biennial U.S.-Africa Business Summit, to be held by the Corporate Council on Africa in Philadelphia from Sept. 16 to Sept. 20, is expected to draw nearly 1,000 US and African business and government leaders.

Every nation in Africa will be represented, and organizers expect more than a dozen heads of state to attend, said Stephen Hayes, president of the 180-member business group.

Nearly one-third of the agenda will focus on showing how US and African small businesses can tap into trade opportunities, with more than 200 African businesses on hand in hopes of meeting potential US business partners.

Africa "represents one of the greatest market opportunities still untested . . . by US business," Hayes said, citing opportunities in energy, telecommunications, health care, agribusiness and other areas.

"This conference has the potential to make Philadelphia the major city in the United States in terms of trade with Africa," Hayes said. The city could become a major transportation hub for Africa, he said.

The oil and natural-gas riches of the Gulf of Guinea could be a boon to refineries in New Jersey, while local companies could modernize newly privatized telecommunications systems and other infrastructure, he said.

Hayes said local business with African countries could double, triple or even quadruple soon after the event if the Philadelphia region takes advantage of the opportunities.

Senegal's ambassador, Mamadou M. Seck, said US companies had ignored Africa for too long, leaving its markets to companies from European nations with colonial ties to the continent.

"Now we want to diversify, and have more choice and more competition," he said.

His own country needs help modernizing roads and rail lines so it can trade with its landlocked neighbors, he said later. Distance-learning technology is needed to bring a single teacher's lessons to 100 remote classrooms, he said.

Over the last three years, Pennsylvania had $370 million in exports, much of it transportation equipment, to African countries, officials said.

Optimism about U.S.-African trade has followed a new law that, since October, has given 34 sub-Saharan African nations improved access to the US market and encourages multinational corporations to invest in Africa.

In Lesotho, investment and trade spurred by the changes is outstripping assistance from the World Bank and other countries by a factor of four, assistant US Trade Representative Rosa Whitaker said.

The new law, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, highlights the apparel industries that officials see as the "entry point" for manufacturing in African countries, Whitaker said.

"It's the kind of sector that you can take into a poor country and get people to work immediately even if they're illiterate," Whitaker said. "Even in Asia, they didn't start with cars and computers. They started with making clothes."

But concern about the continent's problems arose even in the elegant ballroom overlooking Independence Hall where the diplomats lunched. A Sierra Leone delegate asked what organizations could do to help areas racked by war and violence.

"A lot of the issues . . . in Africa will have to be resolved in Africa," Hayes said. "Businesses simply aren't going to invest in areas of war and plunder."

http://www.pcvb.org/ab_pcvb/mac.asp