U.S.-Africa Agribusiness Investment Forum

November 12-14, 2012. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. U.S.-Africa Agribusiness Investment Forum: Private Sector Opportunities in Support of Inclusive Agricultural Growth. The Corporate Council on Africa hosted the 2012 U.S.-Africa Agribusiness Investment Forum in Ethiopia to introduce the U.S.-Africa Business Center (USABC) and its role in facilitating U.S.-African trade and highlight other initiatives designed to boost agricultural growth, trade and investment.

Attended by a number of industry members drawn from the USA, Canada, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso as well as Ethiopia, the conference brought together U.S. and African businesses, investors and financiers, policy makers, representatives of the public sector, capital market experts and service providers. They were able to discuss various cross-cutting issues, including finance, risk mitigation, value-chain development, and industry best practices and trends. The forum was also intended to introduce the U.S.-Africa Business Center and its role in facilitating U.S.-African trade as well as highlight other initiatives designed to boost agricultural growth, trade and investment.
One of the speakers at the Workshop 4: Fork: Opportunities at the End of the Value Chain was Lucy Muchoki, Chief Executive Officer, Pan African Agribusiness and Agro Industry Consortium.

Mark Carrato, Foreign Service- Private Enterprise at USAID  noted the ineffectiveness of the donor support approach and praised the growing focus on public-private partnership as a significant step forward.

Workshop 7 addressed The Role of Regional Economic Communities in Facilitating Agricultural Trade and Investment. The EAC is developing a partnership with the United States that is being designed to increase investment and trade, and private sector participation will be critical to its success.

Related:
25-28 November 2012 - Dakar, Senegal. FARA and UniBRAIN host a side event at the AgriBusiness Forum 2012: 6 UniBRAIN incubees to present their projects!

UniBRAIN is an initiative of the Forum of Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the government of Denmark whose objective is to enable universities, business and agricultural research institutions to commercialise agricultural technologies and produce graduates with entrepreneurial and business skills.

"Africa is blessed with the world’s youngest population but if the youth are not gainfully employed they will become frustrated, angry and dangerous. This must be avoided by creating jobs and for that it is necessary to have job-creators, in other words successful entrepreneurs and business men and women", explains Ralph von Kaufmann, FARA's Facility Coordinator. 

Read Ralph von Kaufmann's full interview here: