by Daniel Morris
One area that politicians, economists, and journalists of all stripes seem to agree is the need for private investment and businesses to flourish in sub-Saharan Africa. Two events this past week in the mining sector – one closing, one opening – affirmed this view. Continue reading
By Meg Dallett
Last week I attended the DC launch of the World Bank and IFC’s Doing Business 2010 report, which annually measures business reforms and ease of doing business around the world. The report ranks countries using ten indicators of how long or arduous it is to do business in those countries – things like starting a business, getting credit, and enforcing contracts – and highlights countries that make progress in any of those areas. Continue reading
By Meg Dallett
After the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported last year that Africa provides the highest rate of return on foreign direct investment (FDI) of any developing region in the world – over 12% – it’s hardly surprising that private investment in Africa is increasing exponentially. In just seven years, FDI to Africa grew by over 550%, skyrocketing from $9.1 billion in 2001 to $60 billion in 2008. Continue reading
By Meg Dallett
According to a recent GAO report on US food aid, Congressional restrictions on that aid make it much more costly and time-consuming to get the food to the people who need it. Currently, the government buys most of the food from heavily-subsidized US farmers and then transports it to the developing world to distribute it-it’s not hard to see that this is pretty inefficient. Not only do our subsidies distort the global market for major crops by keeping prices low enough that African farmers struggle to make a living, we then put many of the remaining farmers out of business by giving our excess crops to their neighbors, the only potential customers they have. Furthermore, the GAO’s results now show that in addition to all this, we’re getting less food aid for our money and it takes longer to get to the developing world. Instead, we ought to be buying food aid directly from those farmers in Africa. Continue reading
Last week, the US announced that the G8 countries would contribute $15 billion over the next three years to help the world’s poorest farmers grow enough food to feed themselves. The initiative marks a new approach to hunger alleviation for the US government – instead of sending food grown in the US to the developing world, the US and the G8 will invest in agricultural inputs like seed and fertilizer and devote funding to research new plant varieties. Continue reading
In this issue:
In this issue:
Published at allAfrica.com – Trade Talk with Rosa Whitaker
by Rosa Whitaker
Slowly but surely, President Obama’s Africa policy is beginning to take shape. In my twenty-five years of work on African economic issues, I’ve seen consecutive US Administrations become increasingly more committed to Africa’s development. I don’t believe President Obama will be an exception. The fact that his overall foreign policy is driven by experienced-hands with Africa expertise gives reason to believe that Africa will be well-integrated and supported within the broader US foreign and economic policy construct. Continue reading
The other night I attended the launch of the Liberian Professional Network, the latest in a series of new organizations with the potential to revolutionize the way African expatriates can help develop their home countries. LPN brings together professionals in the Liberian diaspora to network, socialize, and support social causes and investment ventures back in Liberia. Diasporas have historically given significant financial support to their home countries – Liberia received $300 million in remittances in 2007 – but what sets groups like LPN apart is that they can coordinate all those resources to get a greater return. Continue reading
As new social phenomena, like Twitter, combine one technogical platform (SMS – short message service) with another (the internet), the feasibility of communicating has increased. This has particular relevance for Africa, which has the world’s most dense cell phone usage. (With three out of every four people using cellular numbers as their primary number, cellular numbers in Africa are the closest thing to national ID numbers in most countries). And, as the highly anticipated fiber optic cable in East Africa comes online, Africa will be well-equipped to advance these multimodal technologies. Continue reading
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A delegation of senior health officials from 11 African countries and the African Union presented a leadership award on April 22, 2009, to President Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center for their work over the past 25 years in combating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Africa. The delegation was in Washington to promote public-private partnerships in health and to directly advocate for continued US support and funding for African health initiatives. Continue reading
by Paul Fakes
After ECOWAS, the EAC, and COMESA got things rolling, Business Daily Africa reports that regional free trade agreements in Africa are expanding to more and more of the continent:
“Twenty six African countries seeking to merge their economies into a single trading bloc that controls a combined wealth of $624m and a market of 527m people moved to a definitive stage after their leaders approved plans to establish a free trade area early this week.” Continue reading
Jeff Sachs has a great op-ed in the New York Times this week about President Obama’s ambitious plan to double financial support to promote agricultural growth in developing countries. The African countries to receive the bulk of this money are Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Malawi. Continue reading
By Meg Dallett
It’s no surprise that Africa’s chronic power supply problem is bad for business. The World Bank has started adding up just how bad it is, though, and the results are staggering-Uganda alone loses $50 million annually from distribution and transmission problems on its electrical grid. Continue reading
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were murdered – there will be commemorations throughout the world on April 7th, the day that the genocide began. I was in Kigali last week and was struck by a number of things – how clean and beautiful the city is, how many NGOs and multilateral organizations are working there, and how many women are involved in every sector of society. Continue reading
By Meg Dallett
“Entrepreneurship” is a hot topic in development – in much of Africa, where the private sector was marginalized for so long, small business owners are a key part of driving growth. But running a successful business takes more than a good idea, and many entrepreneurs struggle because they lack training in business management. 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. Continue reading
by Charles Wetherill
Leaders and health officials from around Africa are calling for action against the flood of counterfeit and substandard medicines which daily exhaust the confidence of patients and give advantages to diseases that need no advantage as they take lives. Africa faces the steepest health care challenges of any region in the world. Medicines that cannot be trusted compound those challenges beyond measure. Continue reading
Ugandan smallholders have supplied $53 million worth of food to the United Nations World Food Program as part of its new Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative which is designed to give poor farmers in developing countries the opportunity to move beyond subsistence agriculture into commercial production. (Photo by Penny Ferguson/WFP)
WFP bought maize worth $34 million and beans worth $10 million from Uganda, as well as $9 million worth of maize meal and enriched blends for children. It also paid $14 million to local truckers to transport the foodstuffs to their destination warehouses. The food is intended for use in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Continue reading
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The Whitaker Group (TWG) is the premier strategic consulting firm in the US creating sustainable prosperity in Africa. We facilitate trade and capital flows to Africa and believe in the capacity of Africa and her people to meet the challenges of the 21st century.