Washington, D.C – Rosa Whitaker, founder and CEO of The Whitaker Group, participated in an October 8th panel discussion on accelerating intra-African trade, hosted by the World Bank and chaired by Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank Vice President for Africa. The seminar was held concurrently with the World Bank’s and the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings.
Panel participants, who included Ms. Whitaker, alongside the Honorable Maxwell Mkwezalamba, African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs; Mr. William Egbe, President of Coco Cola in South Africa; Pravin Gordhan, South African Minister of Finance; Dr. Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at The University of Oxford; and Mr. Tony Elumelu, Chairman of Heirs Holdings Limited and former Chief Executive of the United Bank for Africa, focused on a complex, but vital question, “Can Africa Trade With Africa?”
Intra-African trade amounts to only 10% of the region’s total trade, compared with 40% for intra-American trade and 60% for intra-European trade. The panel assessed independent and collaborative roles the public and private sector can play in driving a regional trade agenda. Ms. Whitaker, the architect of the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), offered invaluable insight into how AGOA’s successes might be extended to promote intra-African trade gains.
AGOA has contributed to improved business and regulatory environments on the continent, with the modernization of Africa’s labor laws as a reform dividend. AGOA has also encouraged regional trade, most notably through its 35% rule of origin clause, which allows inputs from other African countries, encouraging investment in markets that would otherwise lack the inputs to produce finished goods.
Ms. Whitaker advocated for the permanent establishment of AGOA, which is currently set to expire in 2012. She proposed a series of innovative tax incentives to reward those who invest in Africa and those who source products from Africa. These measures, part of the AGOA Action Committee’s Enterprise for Development Proposal, would use the U.S. tax code, which has historically been used a transformative political tool, to spur economic development.
In This Issue:
In this issue:
Yesterday in Geneva, Rosa Whitaker, President and CEO of the Whitaker Group, joined World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, President Donald Kaberuka of the African Development Bank, Ministers of Trade from Africa and Asia, the heads of regional organizations such as ECOWAS, and leaders of the International Trade Centre and the United Nations Development Programme as a presenter at the WTO’s Second Global Review of Aid for Trade. 
Recently, Reuters 
More than 40% of people living in malaria-endemic countries in Africa now have access to long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets (LLINs), putting the continent almost halfway to the UN goal of providing 100% of those in endemic countries with malaria control interventions by 2010, according to a new United Nations report.
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. 
Africa moved one step closer to full economic integration in October when representatives from three regional trade blocs, including six Heads of State, agreed at a summit hosted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala, to form a new cross-regional free trade bloc and customs union. The new bloc, to be comprised of the 26 member nations of the Common Market of Southern and Eastern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), will create the largest free trade area on the African continent with a market of over 527 million people and a combined GDP of $624 billion.
