Thanks, Judd, for these framing remarks, and for generously internet hosting us all right here right this moment. Thanks, Takreem, Rahama, and Peter, in your management of the PAC-DBIA, and thanks to all members of the PAC-DBIA for taking the time for this assembly and for all of the work that has led as much as right this moment. I’m enthusiastic about right this moment’s assembly.
I additionally wish to take a second to acknowledge two buddies within the room: Scott Eisner, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s U.S.-Africa Enterprise Middle, and Florie Liser, CEO of the Company Council on Africa. The Commerce Division collaborates so usually and so constructively with each the Chamber and CCA, and you’ve got been such massive supporters of the PAC-DBIA through the years. I’m glad you each might be a part of us right this moment for this assembly.
I had the prospect to fulfill many of the PAC-DBIA members informally at December’s U.S-Africa Enterprise Discussion board. And my group has stored me and Secretary Raimondo knowledgeable on the progress that you’ve got made. Each she and I look to profit from these suggestions earlier than we each go to the continent later this yr. We’re additionally dedicated to seeing how we are able to have a PAC delegation be a part of on one among our journeys.
Secretary Raimondo and I firmly consider within the President and Vice President’s imaginative and prescient for the U.S.-Africa partnership within the subsequent decade. This quintessential Twenty first-century partnership shall be more and more pushed by commerce, funding, and industrial ties, in sectors that can drive jobs and competitiveness on either side of the Atlantic. The suggestions that we are going to hear right this moment shall be important to turning the President’s imaginative and prescient into actuality.
This convening of senior leaders from throughout the U.S. authorities is a testomony to that, and it’s additionally the hallmark of this essential Advisory Council. For the reason that PAC-DBIA was established in 2014, over three consecutive administrations, executives from numerous and dynamic American corporations have come collectively to light up new potentialities for strengthening the industrial ties between the US and Africa.
Suggestions from this group have helped result in actual change and innovation in our approaches. PAC-DBIA suggestions have knowledgeable or instantly led to:
- evolutions in U.S. Authorities financing instruments designed to leverage personal capital for Africa, together with our early expertise with blended finance;
- the Commerce Division’s creation of a brand new digital resolution for disseminating early-stage commerce results in U.S. corporations known as “Specific Leads Center East and Africa”;
- a brand new partnership between USTDA and the Authorities of Kenya below their World Procurement Initiative;
- and a brand new mannequin of engagement to raise our industrial diplomacy with African governments via bilateral industrial MOUs, an effort that started in 2018 throughout a PAC-DBIA journey to the Continent and has continued yielding new partnerships ever since, together with our latest MOU with the Authorities of Zambia, signed by Secretary Raimondo, and introduced by Vice President Harris throughout her go to to Zambia simply two weeks in the past.
PAC-DBIA members themselves have performed high-impact journeys to Africa in 2016 and 2018, and the PAC-DBIA was a key supply of enter serving to to form the implementation roadmap for the Prosper Africa initiative.
On this present time period, the PAC-DBIA has organized itself into subcommittees aligned with the sectors we highlighted in periods at USABF. The suggestions you’re deliberating right this moment will drive us ahead from these discussions to the actions that can assist us catalyze the circulate of two-way commerce and funding we all know shall be so essential to the way forward for the U.S. and African economies.
So, as you start right this moment’s displays, let me decide to you that my colleagues and I’ll contemplate every of your suggestions with as a lot cautious thought as you place into growing them.
For our half on the Division of Commerce, Secretary Raimondo and I’ve mobilized our groups throughout all related bureaus of the Division for a coordinated technique to interact U.S. companies of every type and sizes throughout the US and forge new connections with African companions.
We’re bringing all of our instruments to bear as enhances to the highly effective assets and management represented by my colleagues right here right this moment.
With that, I believe we’re all excited to dive into the displays and dialogue, so I’ll flip it again over to Rahama.