Lays out Policy Imperatives for the Obama Administration during annual CBC Conference
Washington, D.C. (September 25, 2009) – At two headline events on US-Africa policy during the Congressional Black Caucus’s Annual Legislative Conference, Rosa Whitaker, President and CEO of the Whitaker Group and the first ever Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa, called on advocates for Africa to reach out to Congress and the Obama Administration in a concerted effort to support several new trade and investment initiatives for the continent. Continue reading
Just hours before President Barack Obama addressed a joint meeting of Congress on February 24 to publicly disclose details of his economic rescue plan, U.S. Congressional leaders, representatives of African Embassies, World Bank President Robert Zoellick and American business, policy and nongovernmental organization leaders gathered on Capitol Hill to pay tribute to Rosa Whitaker on her birthday and the sixth anniversary of The Whitaker Group (TWG), the company she founded in 2003. More than 150 people, including distinguished American and African political and business leaders, paid tribute to TWG for driving more than $1 billion in trade, investment and revenue streams to Africa during the past six years. 
The $362.6 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact, signed in July 2007 between the Governments of Lesotho and the United States, was formally launched in September in Maseru with the first disbursement of the five-year agreement. The compact program will fund about 17 projects focused on bringing clean and safe water to mainly urban households, increasing the manufacturing sector through a lowlands waterproject, improving the health infrastructure and services for poor rural communities, and expanding economic activity for private sector development by improving access to finance, especially for women.
Government representatives from more than 100 nations, heads of multilateral and bilateral development organizations and members of civil society met in Accra in September to further efforts begun in Paris in 2005 to make aid to developing countries more effective by giving those countries greater ownership in managing assistance from the developed world. Delegates at the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness issued the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA), which declared that “developing country governments will take stronger leadership of their own development policies, and will engage with their parliaments and citizens in shaping those policies. Donors will support them by respecting countries’ priorities, investing in their human resources and institutions, making greater use of their systems to deliver aid, and increasing the predictability of aid flows.
