At this opening session, senior representatives from governments and companies will explore the main theme of this year’s U.S.-Africa Business Summit: Enhancing Africa’s Value in Global Value Chains.  There is an increasingly broad array of examples of successful initiatives to increase the value that African enterprises add to production, ranging from Botswana’s example of transforming diamond processing to advanced automobile and vaccine manufacturing to innovations in business and telecommunications services to African-made creative industry productions. African enterprises are also increasingly successful in creating regional and continental linkages that are in turn, creating new possibilities for growth and job creation, in part energized by Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). This plenary will highlight common themes from examples of successful endeavors and explore how to replicate and scale these efforts to expand collaboration between U.S. and African companies. 

As a number of African countries grapple with food price shocks and food insecurity for the first time in a decade, this has provided a new sense of urgency to AU policies identifying increasing agro-processing as a critical part of Africa’s strategy to increase continental productivity and leverage closer integration under AfCFTA.  This dialogue will feature Presidents talking with key company leaders about specific areas where companies can work with governments to expand food production in critical crops, create more jobs and value.  

Before the global pandemic, closing Africa’s digital divide was one of the continent’s greatest challenges in terms of making sure that millions of Africans without access to the internet did not get left behind global growth trends.  The pandemic spurred greater innovation in Africa than any other continent in the ICT sector, spurring tens of millions of people to shop online for the first time.  Several African countries have made expanding access and developing a robust digital economy strategy a national priority, and e-commerce will also be an important topic in AfCFTA negotiations. This dialogue will feature presidents, the AU Commissioner and key companies discussing their plans and how best companies can collaborate with governments to achieve key targets. 

The African Union has prioritized implementing a strategy to promote industrialization in key sectors, including pharmaceuticals, agro-processing and automobiles to coincide with integration under AfCFTA. The AU and member states are implementing strategies in each of these sectors to encourage private sector investment.  This dialogue will feature Presidents and the AU Commissioner in discussion with key companies about how best to realize the significant opportunities that these objectives present. 

African countries are pursuing increasingly sophisticated strategies to position themselves to move up the value chain in a range of minerals, including the critical minerals that are such a critical part of the world’s drive to create a net zero economy with renewable energy.  This dialogue will feature presidents in discussion with key companies about how best to increase Africa’s participation in global mineral value chains, drawing on Botswana’s examples in the diamond industry. 

The fact that 600 million Africans lack access to electricity is undermining Africa’s ambitious development goals and its ability to create the jobs and economic growth it will need.  However, to increase Africa’s energy production capacity, African countries will have to navigate a challenging path that balances increasing electricity production with limiting future harm from climate change, which will disproportionately affect Africa.  Africa has announced a number of important projects that will change the scope of Africa’s energy picture, including the Mega Solar project between Namibia and Botswana that will generate 5 GW of electricity when completed.  Several countries are also developing significant new natural gas discoveries, which offer the possibility of an accelerated transition from coal, while also contributing to global energy security in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  It is critical that governments and companies work together to produce a shared vision to get this challenging transition right.  This panel will discuss the most important recent developments, including the AU’s adoption in 2022 of the African Common Position on Energy Access and Just Transition, and discuss the outlook for the next several years. 

At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December, President Biden committed to accelerating the partnership with Africa to advance shared prosperity for the people of America and Africa. With multiple new initiatives launched at the Summit including $15.7 billion in new trade and investment deals, and a significant increase in the pace of senior U.S. government leader travel to Africa to include Vice President Harris and several Cabinet members, signs of invigorated U.S. prioritization of the relationship with Africa are generally positive. This plenary session will afford the opportunity to assess fulfillment of the commitments made by U.S. and African government and private sector leaders aimed at strengthening the foundation for growth in the partnership, and promotion of private sector-led economic growth as the engine for the transformation of African trade and investment prospects.  

There’s no better place than Botswana to celebrate the amazing progress African countries have made in strengthening the capacity of their health systems in the last two decades and consider how best to apply lessons learned from those successes to better prepare for future health challenges.  Botswana’s story is an inspiring story of a determined government working with the public and private sectors to put in place and sustain an effective campaign to address the HIV/AIDS crisis. An important early part of its success was finding ways to work with the private sector, which has helped spur further examples of public-private collaboration in both communicable and non-communicable diseases. This dialogue will commemorate PEPFAR’s 20th anniversary while considering lessons learned for strengthening African health systems, including measures to address the evolving shape of Africa’s health challenges as the incidence of cancer and NCDs becomes as challenging as communicable diseases.  In December at the African Leaders Summit, PEPFAR announced that it will focus on innovative new ways to boost African capacity to meet its own needs, combined with an emphasis on expanding the capacity of health systems to prevent, detect and treat a broad range of illnesses.  This dialogue will feature African Heads of State in discussion with leaders from private sector companies and health organizations discussing what the future of public-private collaboration should look like to improve African health sector capacity.  

Accelerating implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) would speed the transformative impact on trade, investment, and trans-continental business. As emphasized by President Biden and Africa’s government leaders at the December African Leaders Summit in Washington, strengthening U.S.-Africa trade and investment partnerships is vital at this time given AfCFTA’s potential to supercharge Africa’s positioning to take advantage of shifts in global manufacturing. These welcome developments raise the imperative of the United States developing a clear, forward-leaning strategy to promote greater trade and investment ties with Africa.  Since 2000, America’s primary economic policy tool has been the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which offers qualified African countries duty-free access to the U.S. market for many goods.  As AGOA approaches its current expiry date of 2025, this is an important moment to explore what steps the U.S. and African countries can take to boost trade and investment.  In this session, companies and governments will offer their perspectives on critical enabling policies needed to accelerate AfCFTA implementation, re-thinking the U.S. approach to encouraging increased private sector-led U.S. - Africa business relationships, and what policies and approaches would have the greatest impact in sustainably deepening trade and investment ties and private sector-led economic growth that benefits the people of Africa and those of the United States. 

Illicit trafficking in minerals, wildlife, lumber, people, weapons, finance, narcotics, cyber-theft and other commodities costs African economies well over one hundred billion dollars in value annually – by some calculations the drain through illicit trade in all forms significantly outpaces the annual value of official development assistance. Worse, these illicit flows resource transnational criminal organizations that fuel unrest and conflict, promote and rely on corruption, and undermine democratic, accountable governance within - and far beyond - Africa’s borders. This session will explore the prospect for enhanced partnerships between private sector companies with expertise in various areas to better enable African governments and multilateral organizations to detect, assess, analyze, identify, interdict, prosecute and hold accountable those perpetrating this massive, illicit theft of Africa’s wealth. Whether remote sensing and communications, AI-enabled data analysis, or programs to strengthen regional and national public transparency, accountability, and justice systems, strengthened private sector support and public-private partnerships in this area is needed.    

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated supply chain interruptions and delays in accessing live-saving products spurred a number of ongoing initiatives to advance regional manufacturing on the continent. These initiatives range from scaling up and expanding existing operations or manufacturing hubs to exploring greenfield growth in newer areas and products. As these efforts progress, ensuring the right ingredients and enabling factors for sustainable growth are put in place will be essential to the overall success of these efforts. This session will convene African government officials and industry leaders to highlight the steps needed to expand health manufacturing in Africa including strategies such as increased private sector engagement, sustainable financing with government support, streamlined regulatory environment, establishing regional manufacturing hubs and coordinating demand for products.   

The sports industry in Africa is a global economic powerhouse, with more than $30 billion in private equity invested in Africa in 2022 and accounting for roughly 2% of global GDP. Global sports leaders like FIFA, the NBA, and the NFL are making significant investments in Africa while Formula 1 and UFC are beginning to explore greater recognition and the economic potential as they grow their viewers. This panel will look further into how sports in Africa can boost economic growth as well as benefit other sectors including health, education, social inclusion, and youth and women’s empowerment. It will highlight the direct economic value related to Africa’s sports sector, including greater investment in sports infrastructure and the cultural impact of diaspora sports stars on how the African sports industry is viewed globally. 

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the pivotal role that women play in driving economic growth and development, particularly as women-owned enterprises and traders play prominent roles in Africa, the United States and around the globe. The U.S.-Africa economic relationship presents a tremendous opportunity to leverage the power of women's leadership and entrepreneurship. This plenary session aims to explore the challenges, opportunities, and best practices in promoting and enhancing women’s role in intra-African trade well as Africa’s trade with global partners such as the United States. Panelists and experts will discuss both public and private sector initiatives, including those of international organizations and foundations, that address women's participation in trade and investment activities, will showcase success stories and highlight the transformative impact of women's leadership in driving trade and investment. Policy measures and interventions to promote gender equality and women's leadership in trade and investment will be highlighted as critical to Africa’s economic growth and to a stronger U.S.-Africa trade, investment, and commercial relationship.

The aviation sector was one of the very first sectors negatively impacted by the pandemic, with travelling at a standstill, movement of people and goods were drastically limited. This forced air transport companies to reimagine themselves to generate growth. Now, that the pandemic is in the rear mirror and travel has resumed at pre-pandemic levels, this session will address the strategies adopted by actors in the sector to not only-weather the storm but resume its role as @a growth catalyst for other sectors. Panelists will also address the policy levers that support the growth of travel, tourism, and trade on the continent; strategies for Africa to grow its vital air connectivity sustainably and its contribution to the continent increasing its value in global value chains.  

SMEs in Africa represent more than 80 percent of the private enterprises and are the largest source of employment for women and youth. Thus, the internationalization of African businesses through the establishment of linkages to global and regional markets is critical to job creation in Africa and the promotion U.S.- Africa trade and investment. Also, U.S. and African government agencies, international finance institutions as well as non-profit organizations play key roles in preparing African businesses and entrepreneurs for growth and readiness through funding and capacity - building initiatives. This panel will bring together the stakeholders- public and private- that are contributing to the growth of entrepreneurship on the continent to discuss their initiatives as well as ways to build an enabling environment, increase innovation and promote new growth segments that will integrate African SMEs into global value chains.  

Africa’s creative industry has experienced tremendous growth this past decade from a marginalized product, with its contribution to the global creative economy valued at $2.2 trillion and a labor force that has seen growth between 12 and 16% every half-decade. Africa’s creative industry is now a source of employment, foreign exchange, and pride for the continent with film alone accounting for $20 billion in revenue and an additional 20 million jobs according to a UNESCO report. From music, fashion, film, and art, the creative industry is considered by policymakers as a growth agent and an economic multiplier in Africa. This panel will explore current financing tools and emerging ones that stakeholders in the industry are leveraging to further grow the already dynamic sector as a commodity on the continent and abroad. 

Countries in Africa continue to face significant challenges in the quest for development. From poverty to insecurity, and lack of basic infrastructure, the continent's development has been slow and uneven. However, in recent times, there has been a growing interest in innovative finance strategies to bridge funding gaps necessary to achieve sustainable development goals while generating financial returns. This panel discussion seeks to explore the potential of innovative financing mechanisms such as impact investing, development impact bonds, etc. in driving sustainable development. It will also discuss the importance of collaborative efforts amongst nonprofits, private sector entities and governments in creating an enabling ecosystem for the implementation of innovative financing mechanisms to stimulate inclusive and enduring development throughout Africa. 

As Africa’s population increases and as more Africans enter the middle-class and adopt western diets, non-communicable diseases are growing rapidly as a leading cause of death and illness, and now approach the same level of impact as communicable diseases.  While cancer is one of the fastest growing areas of concern, there is significant scope to improve medical outcomes by expanding diagnostics and training for medical staff to catch more cases earlier, while also expanding the range of equipment and treatments available to improve outcomes.  Given that, by 2050, one in three cancer patients worldwide will be African, the time is now to increase attention on this set of issues.  This panel will feature leading experts from industry and governments as they discuss practical steps that can be taken now to increase the capacity of African health sectors to detect and treat cancer earlier.

Many African countries have infrastructure deficits and numerous tax programs that often pose high negative impacts to operating of costs for trade, logistics and manufacturing activities. However, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) jurisdiction has shown great relief to companies operating within SEZs, with top level infrastructures, one-stop permits, duty waivers, efficient amenity services, supply chain logistics coordination etc. Attaining this height of efficiency by several SEZs across Africa remains at long vision. How can Africa change the game of SEZ development? What are the proven strategies for development of SEZs in Africa? What are the most efficient financing models for launching new SEZ?