Africa was a priority for the US Trade and Development Agency and an office would be opened in Johannesburg in July, USTDA deputy director Barbara Bradford said in Cape Town on Monday.
She was speaking at the signing of a R2-million grant to Mintek to fund a feasibility study on a planned electrolytic manganese dioxide processing project for Saldanha on the Cape West coast.
Bradford said USTDA was committed to its Africa portfolio, in part because its director’s role in helping to draft the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) legislation that was now driving renewed excitement about economic growth in many African countries.
She said the two-day conference on financing Africa’s Future being held in Cape Town on Monday and Tuesday, was designed to push the roles of finance and private-public partnerships in African investment and trade.
”We should be able to conduct a significant amount of business over the next two days,,” she told delegates from Africa, the United States and other parts of the world.
”Our goal here should be to focus on the projects at hand, but also to look further into the future and strive to work more closely and efficiently together.”
Bradford said that by reducing the distance between project identification and feasibility on one hand and the in-depth analysis by the likely financing institution on the other hand, everyone would benefit — project sponsor’s and public and private financiers alike.
Joe Grandmaison, a board member for the export-import bank of the United States, said it was an exciting time to be involved in trade with Africa.
He said the United States government was committed to expanding trade as a means of fostering economic development, raising living standards, and advancing the cause of peace around the world.
Grandmaison said sub-Saharan Africa was a significant and emerging area of the world.
Just two years ago Agoa helped spur economic growth in 34 sub-Saharan countries by the elimination of tariffs on some 6 400 kinds of goods to the United States.
”In sowing the seeds of growth in Africa, not only will African nations benefit but so will the United States,” Grandmaison said. – Sapa