US president announces $ 200 mln fund to encourage US investments in Africa
Regional-USA, Economics, 10/30/2001

US president George W. Bush announced here on Monday the creation of a $200 million fund to stimulate US investments in Africa.

During a forum held at the state department in the presence of ministers and representatives of 35 sub-Saharan African countries, the US chief executive said "I am pleased to announce the creation of an Overseas Private Investment Corporation support facility that will give American firms access to loans, guarantees and political risk insurance for investment projects in sub-Sahara Africa."

"I've asked our trade and development agency to establish a regional office in Johannesburg, to provide guidance to governments and companies which seek to liberalize their trade laws, improve the investment environment and take advantage of the Free Trade Act between our two continents," president Bush said.

After he commended "the strong declaration issued at Dakar, by 28 African countries calling on all African nations to ratify the 1999 Algiers Convention Against Terrorism," he urged African countries to ratify the convention in order to "have additional judicial, diplomatic and financial tools to root out terrorism."

Bush also announced on the same day the launch of the Trade for African Development and Enterprise Program. With $15 million in initial funding, the trade program will establish regional hubs for global competitiveness that will help African businesses take advantage of AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act), to sell more of their products on the global markets.

He described the AGOA as a road map for how the United States and Africa can tap the power of markets to improve the lives of our citizens, adding that although the law is just over a year, it is already showing its tremendous power.

During the first half of this year, the total trade with sub-Sahara Africa rose nearly 17 percent, compared to last year. U.S. imports from the region now exceed $11.5 billion. Some individual countries have shown staggering increases in trade. Four countries -- Senegal, Seychelles, Eritrea and Madagascar -- saw their exports to the United States grow by over 100 percent.

In Kenya, the government projects that AGOA will create 150,000 new jobs over the next several years, propose new projects, in Lesotho, textiles sectors alone are expected to inject $122 million of investment into that country's economy -- four times the amount of all official development assistance the country received in 1999.

Bush further promised strong support to responsible debt relief, so that nations can devote more resources to education and health. We will continue to press multilateral development banks to provide more assistance in the form of grants, instead of loans. We are moving forward on an initiative I announced in July to improve basic education and teacher training in Africa. And the United States is ready to commit more resources to the new global fund to combat HIV-AIDS and other infectious diseases, once the fund demonstrates success, he said.

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