Speaking to the media in Lagos, Nigeria, on Tuesday, at the end of a US Commerce Department-led American Global Diversity Export Initiative (GDEI) trade mission to South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria, US Commerce Under Secretary for International Trade Marisa Lago highlighted the commitment of US President Joe Biden and his administration to deepening American engagement with Africa. Biden made this commitment at the US-Africa Leaders Summit that he hosted in Washington, DC, in December.
Since then, Lago pointed out, a series of high-level US officials have visited Africa. The most prominent of these have been Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Add in visits by other, less prominent but still senior, officials, and the result has been what Lago called a “a very high, sustained pace” of visits to Africa by senior and very senior US officials.
“So that said, our engagement or vision for deepened engagement with Africa entails a lot more than just high-level visits,” she assured. “We are laser-focused on delivering tangible results across all dimensions of our bilateral relationship, as well as our partnerships with subnational and pan-African institutions.”
She further highlighted that, since the December Summit, the US administration had helped secure 75 new business deals between America and African countries. These deals had a total value of $5.7-billion in two-way trade and investment.
This GDEI trade mission had brought more than 20 US companies and organisations to the three African countries it visited. Most of these American entities were owned by members of the African diaspora in the US. They covered a wide range of sectors, including consumer goods, cybersecurity, electric vehicles, energy, information and communications technology, and trade facilitation.
“This trade mission serves as an example of how intentionally we’re working to deepen and sustain connections between US and African companies,” she affirmed. “We see trade missions like these as a foundational means of business-to-business relationship building as well as an important mechanism to foster ties that lead to concrete trade and investment deals.”
Another goal of the mission was to improve the alignment between US policy approaches and those of Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. In turn, this was aimed at mitigating potential barriers to trade and investment.