Africa’s Economic Landscape

Panelists discuss Africa’s evolving economic landscape at a pivotal moment, including the waning of the traditional foreign aid model, the rise of strategic investment from China and other actors, and the emergence of artificial intelligence as a development tool.

The Darryl G. Behrman Lecture on Africa Policy is held in memory of Darryl G. Behrman, who was originally from South Africa and had an abiding passion for Africa and international peace. The annual lecture is funded by members of the Behrman family. 
BRIGETY: Great. Well, ladies and gentlemen, good evening, and welcome to today’s Council on Foreign Relations Darryl G. Behrman Lecture on Africa Policy, titled “Africa’s Economic Landscape.” My name is Ruben Brigety. I’m the president of Busara Advisors, and I’m a CFR member, and I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion.

The Darryl G. Behrman Lecture on Africa Policy is held in memory of Darryl G. Behrman, who was originally from South Africa and had an abiding passion for Africa and international peace. The annual lecture is funded by members of the Behrman family, and we are very grateful to them.

We have an all-star lineup tonight to discuss our principal title topic of “Africa’s Economic Landscape.”

From my far right we have Yinka Adegoke, editor of Semafor Africa, which for my money is amongst the very best journalistic outlets covering matters on African affairs.

Immediately in the middle is someone known to almost all of us, Flori B. Liser, who is president and chief executive officer of The Corporate Council on Africa. She is a CFR member, and as far as I’m concerned the grand dame on Africa trade policy.

And then we have Dr. Vera Songwe, chair and founder of Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, who is a nonresident senior fellow for global economy and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and brings a wealth of financial experience as it relates to the continent.

So we are going to spend about the first just under thirty minutes or so, twenty-five minutes, in just discussion here on the panel. And then we will go to the audience, as well as to our colleagues that are joining us online, for Q&A.

So let’s get started. So, Flori, my first question is for you. So the Trump administration has emphasized commercial engagement in terms of its policy towards Africa; and quite frankly has deemphasized traditional development assistance, for example with the closing of USAID; and has also deprioritized the promotion of democracy, and human rights, and other sorts of matters. So, from your perspective, how do you see the administration’s commercial diplomacy agenda in Africa? And, so far, what’s working and what’s not working?

LISER: Great. So thank you. It’s an honor to be here, CFR. As you said, I’m a member.

You know, I think the thing that is most prominent at this point is that we are at an inflection point in terms of where Africa is and where the United States is. And what I mean by that is that, you know, people were talking about moving from aid to trade many years ago, to be honest. I think where we are now is we’re not talking about aid to trade but to investment, and particularly to investment in Africa’s industrialization and Africa’s value-added to processing its own minerals and commodities before sending them out to the rest of the world as raw materials.

And I think it’s also an inflection point because the U.S. government has been very much moving towards what is the way that they can promote commercial engagement with the continent. How can businesses be incentivized into coinvesting with the government in Africa? And I know at CCA our focus is to bring together—use our convening power to bring together all the stakeholders, public and private sector, U.S. and African.

And right now we have the opportunity to take the lead from Africa. I personally don’t like the narrative that makes Africa on the recipient end, that they’re just sitting there waiting for either aid or trade or investment. They have a very robust agenda right now through the African Union’s Africa 2063, which covers all sorts of issues and sectors from digital trade to youth to health; but also the African Continental Free Trade Area, which is really a gamechanger for Africa because it now brings together in one market—out of fifty-four countries, I think fifty-three have signed the AfCFTA—you know, a market of 1.4 billion people, $3.4 trillion. And so Africa is waiting—not waiting, but engaging with a range of partners. The United States is certainly one of them.

I think the commercial diplomacy policy that was announced last year by State Department is one that reflects our interest in focusing on private-sector-led growth, both on the continent and actually in the United States as well. How can we bring the private sector together with those who are setting the policy and enabling environment for trade, investment, and business?

And so, you know, we’re very focused at CCA on what we can do to look at things in, you know, energy, energy transition, digital, and ICT, and AI. Health is another area that is a focus. Financing—there are all sorts of new ways of financing, and we have the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, we have the Export-Import Bank, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency as government agencies that are ready, but they’re really supporting the private sector.

So I think that that is what is different now. That is why we’re at this inflection point. And we have to give a lot of credit to the Africans for what they have done and the leadership that they have taken, the agency that they have taken for their own economic development, and the kind of partnership—economic partnership that they want with the United States.

And I think the last thing I’ll say is that in key sectors like agribusiness, digital, fintech, the U.S. is really one of the premier partners. There isn’t an African country that I go to visit—and I visit a lot of them—where they are not asking for U.S. partners to come in and work with them in key sectors. Of course, there’s critical minerals. I think Dr. Songwe will say a lot to that, but that’s another area. And then strategic corridors, which I think looks at not just critical minerals but agribusiness. It looks at energy and power distribution. These are the things that will make a difference in terms of the U.S. partnership with Africa on the economic—the economic improvement that all of us can benefit from: U.S. and African companies, and workers, and consumers.

BRIGETY: Great. Thank you.

Yinka, if I can come to you and pick up on this thread that Flori mentioned, on the one hand about an inflection point, you know, the other hand about African agency. Because I would argue that one of the—one of the most significant developments on the continent in the last twenty years is the sheer breadth and diversity of other sovereign actors that are engaging in Africa beyond the historical colonial relationships, and certainly beyond the United States. And so, from your broader lens as a journalist looking at the entirety of the continent both inside and out, how do you see African governments diversifying and engaging their various commercial partnerships? And what lessons do you think that holds for the United States?

ADEGOKE: Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me. I feel I’m in the wrong position. I’m usually on that end of the—(laughter)—of the—of the panel asking the questions. And you know, it’s an honor to be on a—on a panel with experts where you guys actually do it. I’m in the business of narrative, right—like, understanding what the narrative is and the influence of that narrative about the big decisions, you know, actual people who actually do the work actually make.

And that narrative around—to your question, Ambassador, it’s really interesting to just see how the United States is kind of positioned at this time even, as you say, all these other players are coming into the market, right? And it’s not like they weren’t there, but they’re now exerting more influence. They are taking Africa more seriously at the very time when it feels quite strongly—and this is the point about narratives—like, the United States is kind of reducing—it’s just self pulling back, right, while saying we are—we are all in or we care. All in was the last guy, right? (Laughs.) But you know, the—you know, this White House or any State Department still very much talks about Africa being an important economic opportunity for the United States.

But if you actually sort of take a step back and look at the big picture, it’s almost like the people involved do not seem to understand that the United States was way up there, separate from everyone else, right? It was not just aid. Because aid dominates the conversation, but it wasn’t just aid, you know. There was investment, just like Flori was saying there. There was also, you know, partnerships with security cooperation. There was also influence with the multilaterals, be it IMF or World Bank, right? So the United States played this huge role, and when it would go to these countries and talk to them about a partnership or whatever it had all sorts of levers to pull, right? And these countries would, you know, invisibly respond with cooperate. Or, you know, even if they weren’t always pleased with some of the, you know, stuff around democracy or governance, but they would eventually sort of work with the African countries.

And what we’re seeing now is that you can already start to feel that the United States is almost just another country, another bilateral partner. And this is supposedly intentional, but there are reasons why this doesn’t work as well as it used to. Because if you come to a country with the same expectation that we are the United States and you will do what we ask for, you are going to get situations like you see in Zambia, where they pushed back at the idea that you are going to demand something in exchange for critical minerals access. You’re going to see the protests in Kenya at the idea that you will bring an Ebola clinic there. You know, and all—and there’s going to be more of this, even as countries like the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia and all these other countries start to have more influence.

But let’s be clear, it’s not just that they have more influence or the United States is pulling back; it’s also about African governments and countries’ leaders understanding that they have more leverage themselves. Because the more options there are, the better they can negotiate, the better they can push back on some of these demands, as they see it, which might not serve their agenda. Some of them might, but now they have more options. And this is a really interesting time for those governments or those players who know how to make this work for themselves and for their citizens, right?

But there’s a broader challenge here with the United States’ approach, which is also the message—the mixed messages the U.S. is sending. Because it’s not just about your sort of classic kind of development discussions; it’s also about, how do you think about Africans themselves, right? How are you treating people? When you block off visas for almost half the countries; when you slash visa offices in—so much so that, I mean, about half the countries you have to travel to another country to get a visa to United States; when you ask people to bring visa bonds before, $15,000 in countries where people, you know, I don’t know, earn $3,000 a year or something; how are you supposed to be doing business with these people? This is not—this is not—it’s a very kind of mixed and confused message the United States is sending right now.

At the same time, as I said earlier, they—these countries—and not just the governments and the leaders, but actually the businesses, the local businesses—the citizens have options, you know. So it’s clear that things are changing, and, you know, where it leads we’ll see. We can get into it a bit more.

BRIGETY: Yeah. Thank you.

Vera, as we talk about this idea of inflection point, and narrative, and how the United States and our government sees Africa, one of the things that clearly has caught the imagination of the U.S. government in the last year is critical minerals and turning to Africa as a source of critical minerals and their beneficiation. However, they are more than just critical minerals in Africa. And so, from your perspective, particularly as somebody who’s running a capital markets firm, where are—where is the smart money going? Where are the other sectors that investors and others see as not only commercially viable, but also driving the economic future of Africa?

SONGWE: Well, first of all, thank you, Ambassador. Thank you for inviting me to CFR. This is an important and interesting conversation. Thanks for coming. It’s the end of the day.

Listen, I think right now, when we talk about critical minerals, many people forget critical minerals is a means to an end. And what are some of those ends? And that’s really where Africa is today, and maybe that’s where some of the tension is.

The first end for Africa is energy. Clearly, we need to invest more in energy. We don’t have stranded assets, so we are building new utilities. We are building new grids, privatizing grids. I see Faheen is here with Donald (sp) at a time when we’re trying to fund grid privatization on the continent. There’s a huge amount of opportunity that is in that—in that sector. And interestingly enough, the investments in sort of the energy—we have the International Solar Alliance. It’s being led by India and Turkey. It’s not the United States. India and Turkey are leading the way on digitization of the grid. So it’s AI. It’s compute.

Today, Africa only has 5 percent of global compute facilities, so there is huge space and huge opportunity if one wanted to come in and do compute. I think right now we all talk about—(inaudible)—and all of that, we are just users of the application. With compute, you become developers, builders of your own application. And we know what—when you build your own applications—we just saw SpaceX, right? We know where that can take you to. But this is a big field on the continent where a lot of people are investing. We see a lot of Gulf investment coming into it.

And so it’s the energy plus what is AI doing for it, and you’re going to see me repeat this.

The second big area of investment is logistics—logistics, because we need to move goods through fifty-five countries. We need to move from Kenya to Senegal and from Algeria to South Africa. We are building continental supply chains. As we talk about energy security, in Africa we are talking about global food security we need to be able to secure as Africans.

BRIGETY: Yes.

SONGWE: We no longer want when there is a crisis in Ukraine we cannot have access to fertilizer, so we’ll buy fertilizer from Morocco. We no longer want that when there is a crisis in Russia we don’t have wheat, so we will buy wheat from Zimbabwe. So today Egypt is buying wheat from Zimbabwe, Cameroon is buying fertilizer from Morocco. But we cannot move those goods. We need to move them. So logistics is a huge business that is building and is going to get even bigger as we go forward.

Medical services. We keep talking about the continent as a continent with 1.4 billion people. Those 1.4 billion people need access to better health care, and so the health-care business is expanding exponentially on the continent. I think there what we need to learn is to understand how we can actually do health care that allows for access for all but also has the private and research component. Again, you need compute, you need data, and we need a lot of work to be done there. I think we all—I mean, we are going through Ebola right now and a lot of the conversation around how you build resilience. We saw COVID and we built the pharmaceutical laboratories, but we are still buying a lot of our pharmaceutical products from Asia, from Europe. And we need to move that, for health security, onto the continent. So, a lot of work is happening on health security and how we move a lot of our health production to the continent. And we’ll see South Africa with Aspen, Rwanda has opened, Senegal of course, Cameroon, Algeria. So we have some hubs where you have those fertilizer happening.

Education itself, huge opportunity, because that’s where the skills are. Today we need to begin to graduate a lot more engineers. We need to begin to train them. We need to make sure that that training is done. And interestingly enough, a lot of the partnerships that are happening with the GCC countries are happening on the energy front, but they are also happening on the skills and R&D front. So there’s a nice continuity there where there is renewable energy—of course, hydrogen. We’ve seen the big—one of the biggest investments that has gone into Mauritania from the GCC countries, $34 billion is Mauritania GCC renewable energy. But research and technology are coming on the back of that.

So my sense is, as we talk about the United States and we talk about critical minerals, even in the space of critical minerals what we are having is not just critical minerals but looking at the EV, the mobility space. Huge mobility investments in Kenya now. We’ve seen in Ethiopia a ban on fossil fuel cars, so there’s going to be—they still need to get their chargers and a lot of other things in place, but we’re beginning to see that. In Nigeria, EV bikes are already beginning to dominate and soon you’ll—the transition to EV vehicles will be quite easy. And so you’re beginning to see that mobility investment taking place, and I think that’s another space that will become quite big very fast because as you start the mobility they are still doing two-way, so bicycles and motorbikes, but that gives you the technology, gives you the knowledge, gives you the education, and the capacity to switch.

China has a hundred and something EV vehicle companies. They cannot survive in China. We’ve already seen one of them coming to Morocco. We’ve seen a couple of them going into Europe. Two of them are looking to get into South Africa. So—I think Kenya is trying to vie for one to come in. So we are—we are going to begin to see those investments come in and creating, then, an ecosystem for mobility.

So it’s AI, it’s compute, it’s mobility, it’s energy, because the minute we move into renewable energy then you can do EV vehicles and you can charge them quite easily.

So I think what Africa is now trying to do is Africa has also discovered that they have about 4 trillion of local currency resources in Africa, within Africa, that businesses like ours are looking at how we can make more liquid, how we can make more deployable, so that, actually, Africa can use its own resources to enter these businesses.

And I take an example. We’ve been now four years in a very difficult economic situation. Only four African countries have actually defaulted and gone to the IMF. We are now doing innovative financing tools, some of them not so wise—(laughs)—and so I think there is also a space in the financial sector. So as Africa begins to move from huge dependence and heavy dependence only on sort of concessional and aid resources into financial markets, is where do we get that cadre of, you know, mutual funds, institutional investors, people who understand the market, and can then help Africa design the products that it needs, and to make sure that it can go forward. And I think this is a new field that is really beginning to grow, and we’ll see a lot more Africans leaving New York and London and coming back onto the continent to convert this $4 trillion that is sitting behind the continent into real deployable investment.

BRIGETY: Thank you.

So I’m going to ask one more question and then we’ll come to the audience, so please start formulating your questions because we’re coming to you next.

Flori, I cannot let the opportunity go by and not ask you about AGOA.

LISER: That’s right.

BRIGETY: And so—

LISER: I wrote it down, AGOA and beyond, right here on my paper.

BRIGETY: It is—it is no secret that you are amongst the most passionate and articulate advocates for the renewal and continuation of AGOA here in Washington, but my question is slightly different. One, given everything we’ve just talked about with regard to narrative and inflection point or whatever, what is the argument or the set of arguments that are different now that you think will actually work to move AGOA towards renewal in some form? And then the second question is, what’s—what should that form be? If you could blue-sky it, right, what would the next iteration of AGOA look like?

LISER: So I think—I mean, first of all, for me, I wrote here, you know, encircled it, AGOA and beyond, because I didn’t mention it before.

How it relates to what’s new now is that at the point that AGOA was first launched twenty-five years ago Africa was not well-positioned in terms of industrialization. AGOA was not put in place to try to promote more raw commodities coming to the U.S. It is true a lot of imports that are natural commodity imports have come into the U.S., including, for example, critical minerals, where the tariffs are quite low. And I always remind people that tariffs are not the issue with critical minerals, but value addition and beneficiation on the continent is really the key. And even if you look at critical minerals, I mean, the U.S., frankly, is a little bit late to the game. I think China now has about 60 (percent) to 70 percent of the value-added critical minerals supply chain already locked up.

But I think the key here is, what are the ways that we here in the U.S., the private sector and the government, can work with Africans so that we could be natural off-takers of—so we would invest in the processing of critical minerals, lithium and cobalt and so forth, on the continent? We would, by virtue of that, diversify our dependence in terms of the value-added critical minerals products. We don’t want to be in a situation which we saw during COVID where, you know, semiconductors factories were closing down. So we want to have more resilient supply chains, and who else but Africa could be involved in that—not just in critical minerals, but in other areas as well, other sectors as well?

And I think—you know, solar panels. You know, Africa could be a place where investments into solar panels, renewable energy—we’re already seeing that. We have CCA member companies who are investing in that on the continent—hydro, solar, wind, et cetera. And so that doesn’t mean that there should be no investments in gas, for—by the way. But the point I’m making is that the potential for partnerships with Africa are there and AGOA can actually help to incentivize that.

I think a new AGOA—just to get to your second part of your question—so we need long-term renewal, ten years or more. Why? Most of the investors, especially in value-added processing, need a two-, three-, four-year ramp. Then they need to know how we are going to then repatriate our investments and get our money back. That is a longer-term narrative that if you only give a two- or three-year extension of AGOA you’re not going to get that result, and that’s what we want. We don’t want Africa to be dependent on inputs only from China. We want Africans to also be able to have regional supply chains where they’re providing the inputs to each other.

And I have to say, I’ve seen it myself. I visited a factory in Lesotho and there’s one in Botswana. Lesotho, they were producing the leather car seats that went to South Africa for automobiles being shipped to the U.S. under AGOA. Botswana is producing these inputs for automobiles as well that also go to South Africa. When you look at their exports to the U.S. or their trade with U.S. under AGOA, you won’t see that there. But I was in that factory in Lesotho and I saw it for myself.

So we want to incentivize more investment into South Africa’s industrialization, and I think that DFC could do more in that area. So an AGOA that includes reference to what DFC can do, what Ex-Im Bank can do, I think that that will be very important.

And I think that, you know, anything that we can do to look at Africa in a continental way. So we may not be able to add North Africans to AGOA, but we can certainly change the cumulation rules so that inputs from North Africa into sub-Saharan African countries that are eligible for AGOA would then count towards the rules of origin.

So, you know, we can come up with some, I think, pretty good things that we can do, but we need the long-term renewal.

And last but not least, the message we’re giving on the Hill and to the administration is that AGOA is already an America-first policy. Why is it—that the case? Because it benefits U.S. companies, U.S. workers, and U.S. consumers. And we could probably go state by state, and talk to different members of Congress, and talk about the ways that they have companies that are benefiting from trade with Africa, whether it’s under AGOA or even MFN trade. There are U.S. companies across the entire—all across America that are benefiting. And so we want to support that, and I think that’s one of the best arguments that we can make both with the Hill and with the administration about why we should have a long-term renewal of AGOA.

And then we need to go beyond AGOA, and I will end here. I think for a long time we’ve known that a unilateral preference program, which was put in in, you know, the year 2000, is not the same thing that you want to do today in 2026 with Africa given where Africa is today, and there are a number of African countries that are ready and able to go beyond AGOA. And so we want to be looking at the ways that we can have economic partnerships with African nations that are mutually beneficial but also established in a way that makes the most sense for African nations kind of where they are, and also for the U.S. in terms of where we are.

BRIGETY: Great. Thank you.

Delighted now to take questions from our colleagues here in the audience.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

So, yes, please.

Q: Hi. Irving Williamson, retired. (Comes on mic.) Sorry. Irving Williamson, retired USITC commissioner and actually spent a lot of time in 2000—in the late 1990s working on AGOA.

And the thing that is really bugging me now is, yes, we—the African Continental Free Trade Area is really kind of a success for AGOA, because one of the things we were trying to do was to get African countries to reduce their trade barriers between themselves because that would make them grow faster and it would be more attractive for the U.S. But you’re talking about renewing AGOA. How is that all going to work with all the crazy tariffs that we have now? And we all know what impact that’s having on investment and on companies willing to invest. So how does renewing AGOA when you’re having all these tariffs that are just the thing that we were trying to get rid of when we started?

BRIGETY: Vera, let me ask you to take that one. You’re like, why me? Why not? (Laughter.) How do you reconcile the idea of AGOA with the tariff regimes that the administration has launched?

(Pause.) (Laughter.)

LISER: Vera’s like, I have no idea how you reconcile that. (Laughter.) No, I’m teasing.

SONGWE: No, I think—I think Flori knows. And Flori was right when she started by saying we are at an inflection point. I think Africa has changed. We have to be honest.

LISER: Yeah.

SONGWE: I don’t know that there is seven African presidents who have AGOA in their top-ten priorities. (Laughter.)

MR.     : Exactly. (Laughs.)

SONGWE: Let us be clear. There is none.

MR.     : Exactly. (Laughs.)

SONGWE: In their top ten. I didn’t say top five; I said top ten, because I think that the damage that the tariffs did closed that—that train sailed. And so, essentially, let us—you know, global trade increased in the last two years with all of these conversations of tariffs in the United States.

As we all know, China had a 300—what was it—2.3 trillion surplus, because they started trading with the east and with Africa. So there is a sort of intrinsic battle that we are fighting, which is this battle that says we’re trying to drive out China. But we are desperately doing everything—as America, when I say “we”—America is desperately doing everything to bring China in. Because when you put tariffs, where is it the countries go? When you block your borders, where do other countries go? When you say that we cannot—on AI, we cannot get access to this particular application, where else do we go? Huawei.

So essentially—and now with the Gulf intermediating that conversation with China, it happens in Dubai. So, while we are having all these conversations about we’re trying to fight China, we’re trying to—China just last year invested almost $60 billion more on the continent. But this time, China has been wise. Through the private sector, markets. CATL is one of the biggest companies today that is actually, I think, just getting into a partnership with Ford Motors to teach them how to do EV vehicles. CATL gets 80 percent of its revenue from DRC. If CATL could not get that revenue from DRC that it sends to NVIDIA, that then turns the chips into chips, they will not exist.

So I think this realization of the new geopolitics is—that’s why people are not—I think we need to be conscious of that. And as we talk—as the Americans talk about energy security and trade security, the Africans are talking about it too. And the Turks are talking about it too. So there is that whole conversation that is coming. And my sense is it’s not whether it’s AGOA or not. Let’s take the example of the Lobito Corridor. How long have we been talking about the Lobito Corridor? (Laughter.) I think it’s not about talking. It’s about demonstrating it. We need to go in there and we just need to do it, right? If you want to do value addition, not difficult. Get in. Let’s do it.

We can argue how much we want about the train in Nairobi now, and the fact that—I don’t know how many people have been to Nairobi. It used to take you three hours to get to the airport. Now it takes you fifteen minutes, because there is a train there. We’ve been talking about the Lobito Corridor before we started doing that rail, and we’re still talking about the Lobito Corridor after the rail is done. I think these are the things that we need to look at. Is we need to decide—as America, when I say “we”—the United States, you cannot do everything. But pick one or two things and just do them well, and have the demonstration effect. And right now, the only demonstration effect we have is saying, we don’t want China. Fine. Don’t want China. But that’s not good enough if, as an African country and as a leader, I have to feed my people, I have to create jobs, and I have to deliver prosperity. If China can deliver those for me, then I want China all you want, and then some. And that’s what the leaders are doing.

And so I think that there is a tension in the conversation that we need to resolve, in the United States, about whether is it AGOA, is it tariffs, is it China. No, I think—and I’d stop here—when Ford Motors two years ago said, we want to work with CATL to understand EV vehicles, I think Congress stopped it. But they just allowed it, because it is good for American business, it’s good for American industry, it creates jobs. And I think that’s the kind of decision making—and maybe what this administration is trying to do is come back to some practicalities. Let’s make practical decisions.

And actually, they have been practical decisions. DFC today is making the right decisions, is taking much shorter time to go in and close deals on the continent, and it’s not looking about whether we are trying to displace China or not, or trying to displace Turkey. No. They’re saying this makes business sense. I have a return. I’m going to do it. And I think that’s how you rebuild AGOA or beyond, in some sense. We will wake up one morning, and we would have rebuilt an AGOA beyond, because we would have followed where is the deal, where is it profitable for Africa, and where is it profitable for America?

LISER: Mmm hmm, absolutely.

BRIGETY: Good. Thank you. My fellow bow tie caucus member in the back. Thank you.

Q: Thank you. Thank you for really fabulous panel. Jeff Blander. I’m with State, but with that said I’m here representing Jeff.

And I have a question. I heard something that was just really phenomenal, that I’ve always believed in is the idea, of what are the new types of commercial financial products and mechanisms that we need? Because, as we all know, the continent has a liquidity problem to really drive SMEs and growth. And we’d love to hear your thoughts on what are those new types of commercial products that we need to develop and create? Thank you.

BRIGETY: Vera, I think that’s yours too.

SONGWE: That’s fine. My business is called the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, so when you say “liquidity,” I’m happy. No, I think—when I say that there is $4 trillion behind the continent, the biggest—I say that Africa is a country—a continent that has idle and illiquid resources. Idle and illiquid. It’s idle because it’s sitting in government balance sheets, it does nothing, or it’s being invested in U.S. Treasurys, which does nothing. And illiquid is because we don’t have secondary markets to convert any of our savings into resources that are investable. And so that’s why I said that one of the segments for growth on the continent is financial services. We need to begin to find what are these new instruments.

Repo markets. I just launched an index. We are about to create the first all-Africa ETF—the first. How many years—eighty years later we’re creating—we deliver. And, Faheen, listen to this, because I’m coming to see you. (Laughs.) We deliver 18 percent. We’re performing better than the emerging market, JPMorgan emerging market bond market index. Better than it. But the index did not even exist for anybody to know that you could invest in it, right? If you take Africa equities, we don’t have an index. We’re developing one. So I think there’s all these tools.

And as part of that, because those tools don’t exist, we are seeing—the IFC just released now the first securitization project. It’s the second time we’re doing a security in the IFC. And this was because I think there was this sense that Africa does not save, Africa doesn’t have any savings. Asset recycling. We could recycle—that’s what—that’s what is keeping Morocco alive, is asset recycling. They’re able to recycle the assets and deliver a lot more resources. That’s what the Gulf countries are doing. We are now—Angola just created a sovereign wealth fund in partnership with Oman. It is realizing and releasing capital for Angola to develop.

So there is so much that can be done if we understand how to unlock the financial capital that exists on the continent. We are still borrowing a lot in, you know, foreign exchange. And so a lot of the conversation in our streets here is about effects and how you derisk and how you blend. We don’t need all of that if we can structure things well, right? If our own pension funds can invest 15 percent in infrastructure, our pension funds are 600 billion (dollars). Every article that we write says, Africa needs 500 billion (dollars) to close the gap. Our pension funds are 600 (billion dollars). So why can’t we find ways in which we can securitize that and ensure—or, create repo facilities, or do swaps, which would release some of that capital? And I think that’s what Africa is—this period now is a period where we are beginning to see it.

And thank God for Aliko, because I think what Aliko has shown us—Aliko Dangote—a lot of Aliko Dangote’s refinery was financed by African capital, African DFIs, because they took a bet on Aliko.

LISER: And Afreximbank.

SONGWE: So Afreximbank, AFC, we just saw, is putting some resources in it, African Development Bank. And I think Africa is beginning to realize that we can actually do better than we thought we could. And that demonstration effect of the Aliko Dangote refinery—which is the biggest refinery in the world, which is today supplying the United States and Europe—I think is a sign that we are now in a different space in Africa’s growth.

ADEGOKE: Can I just come in here? I mean, this is why I started out talking about narrative, right? Like, when you start to tell those stories about the Alikos—he came to our conference earlier this year. And I had met him three or four years ago. And he was a completely different person, because he spent the whole time for the last five years just trying to raise his money and convince people that this could be done, right?

So it’s a really—it seemed like a really simple thing. Like, just tell the story of how this can be done, the work that AFC did in just, actually, that four trillion number everyone quotes now, was AFC’s research, right? Africa Finance Corp. They go out of their way, they show this money is there. But it’s just sitting, as you said, in pension funds, in Treasury bonds. It’s not being used. We need regulators as well to also change rules so that money can be not just invested in Treasury bonds, you know, in the Fed, but also invested in venture capital, or, you know, private equity, whatever—what have you, right? There needs to be a change.

And we need to tell those stories over and over again, so it starts to become reality, right? We start to understand that. Oh, yes, there is money there. Because there’s a real belief—there’s a real belief that there is no money on this continent. And yet, there are pension funds in every country, like, state pension funds and private pension funds, and so on and so forth. So there’s a real opportunity here for us to change the way people think about this opportunity, and creating—being innovative with, like, companies like Vera was saying. Not just private companies, also governments to think differently about the way this can work. Yeah.

BRIGETY: Thank you. Steve, did you have a question?

Q: So I’m just going to go down the road—

BRIGETY: Steve, would you mind identifying yourself for everybody else in the room?

Q: Pardon me?

BRIGETY: Would you mind identifying yourself for everybody else in the room?

Q: Sorry, I was going to go down the road that had already been gone down in terms of—oh. (Laughs.) Steve Cashin of Pan African Capital.

First of all, thank you all for being here. And thank you for all of the advice that I’m getting. (Laughs.) One of the key issues—and I think it’d be interesting from all of your point of view—is I’m a banker. I’ve been in—I’ve invested in banks across the continent. I’ve invested in numerous financial institutions across the continent. And the U.S. has still not opened up the correspondent banking relationships across the continent that any of the discussions that you are having today are needed to trigger.

And, OK. I have a bank in Liberia. Maybe that’s not the first choice of investment. Maybe Ghana is not the second choice. But it’s not the worst choice. And still the U.S. is triggering on—you had mentioned critical minerals are a means to an end. How do we get to thinking of what the means to the end really are? You had mentioned AID, and the importance of AID. My father was one of the founders. Killing it is a shame. And you’re right, it wasn’t aid for aid’s sake. It was aid for multiple sake. How do we encourage this administration to look at the components that you need to have in order to get there? Mine is correspondent banking. And I have knocked my head against a brick wall for twenty years to get there.

BRIGETY: Vera.

SONGWE: I mean, I don’t want to—it’s in my space as well. But I think it’s just legislation. I honestly believe that today, with Africa and the rest of the world, a lot of what is needed is not money. It’s releasing legislation that makes it impossible to do business. Whether it’s—

LISER: Possible to do business.

SONGWE: It makes it impossible.

LISER: Oh, yeah.

BRIGETY: Stopping the legislation—

LISER: Oh, you’re saying the other—OK.

SONGWE: Whether it’s the CBAM, whether it’s the difficulty with KYC legislation, whether it’s phytosanitary rules, there is so many nontariff barriers. And then at the end of the day, we say, oh, it’s high risk. But we’ve put in all these barriers that they end up with high risk. And so the development institutions spend all their time giving guarantees. That is the development business today. And so if we could work on changing, unlocking some of this regulatory impediments to doing business on the continent, I think we will be so much better so much quicker.

LISER: I think the other key, besides, obviously, the enabling legislation or keeping people from the disabling legislation, I think we have to look at some of the new opportunities for blended finance as well. I don’t know that, you know, ten years ago there was as much opportunity to look at how you can have, you know, government funding, sovereign wealth funds, et cetera, working side-by-side with private capital. And I think that now we’re seeing how to leverage those so that it’s beneficial for both. You know, one side can help to mitigate the risk, the other can come in with the capital that’s needed. I also think that the discussion about—and both Yinka and Vera have touched on this—of whether Africa has some of the wealth. Because I think a lot of times in these discussions there isn’t sufficient focus on the capital that the continent can bring to the discussion. And, you know, that’s a reflection of how you value Africa, whether you understand what Africa has to offer at this point.

You know, we talk about the challenges, right, but we should also be looking at the offerings. You know, what are the things that Africans can do? And, you know, we would hear, oh, there isn’t sufficient capital. But then we’d hear, actually there’s sufficient capital, there’s just not sufficient bankable projects. So how you structure the projects so that, in fact, you can unlock, as Vera was saying, the capital that’s sitting there, not being, you know, utilized, or being underutilized. You know, this is something that I think everyone is now in a better position to look at. The correspondent banking issue, you know, I think there are things there, Steve, that, you know, people like you, who’ve been around a long time and know what the issues are, we need to, you know, have folks that will sit down with you and talk about the actual—you know, the fundamental things that are keeping correspondent bankers from the U.S. from stepping in and doing what they really could do.

SONGWE: This is Basel.

LISER: Pardon me?

SONGWE: Basel. Basel. But we have a new Fed governor who is willing to take some of that on. So we could—I think the new Fed is an ally on Basel, and looking at it. Yeah.

BRIGETY: So we have time for one, maybe one-and-a-half questions. And this lady here has been very patient. So, please, maybe for you.

Q: Hi. Faheen Allibhoy. I lead our—I’m at JPMorgan. I lead our business with development banks. And in the past I’ve worked with Vera on the continent, actually, in Senegal, covering Mauritania, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, that part of the world.

My question really is to Yinka and Flori. I think, in terms of the how. I mean, I think people in this room are very familiar, but the narrative for Africa, how do we change it? Because it’s, like, twenty years behind, for someone who lived there up to five years ago. I mean, the fact today that people are just still saying “Africa” is bothersome to me. There are fifty-four countries that are very different economically, socially. When are we going to stop saying “Africa” and get a little bit more specific about where we want to invest, especially as the U.S.? This U.S.-China is also a little bit démodé. You know, I mean, when you’re—when you’re on the ground, the Moroccans are in the banking sector, the South Africans are in the power sector, you know, the Turks are in the—you know? And the Africans are everywhere, right? You go to a mall in Accra and it’s full of Ghanaians. And you go to, you know, coffee shops in Nairobi, and it’s full of, you know, people from all over the world.

This China-Africa thing is not—China-U.S. in Africa I think, is not very real. And when you say, Yinka, in the past the U.S. was more present, I would like to know where? I mean, the French were present. (Laughs.) And they continue to be. And I don’t know if we’re mythologizing some of that. And then—and then every article is about demography exploding in a bad way, about immigration, about pandemics. So as someone who works in the media, and we know that this is not the reality on the ground, how do you change that?

ADEGOKE: You change that by—what I talk about a lot is telling more complete stories, right? Sometimes people tell me, oh, you should write positive stories about Africa. It’s, like, no. I’m not in the business of writing positive stories. I’m in the business of telling stories which show both sides of what’s going on here. And that you don’t—and that’s why I talked about the business of narrative, which is, like, people have very fixed ways of thinking about the way they tell stories about Africa. And I spent the last ten years doing this. I used to be a full-time sort of business journalist before here, in the U.S. and the U.K. But when I started writing about Africa, or editing stories about it, my question was always, why we—why do we always have to have this same sort of framing of stories?

And to talk very quickly to your thing—to your point about sort of the presence of the U.S. in Africa. One of the things that I think has been clear, especially since April last year, whenever it was the woodchipper incident, was that the U.S. presence was very much in that health and humanitarian kind of world. And it wasn’t as present or as wide as you’d expect in investment. But he was there, but it just was not the story. Meanwhile, China came in, and they came in with a totally different approach, right? They’re not in health. And when there was COVID, they had—people had to call them out. There’s Ebola now. People are calling out China. But actually, they’re there doing infrastructure, partnering with the governments, asking them what they want. Whereas the U.S. had always had USAID, and it was—did huge amounts of work, backed all sorts of things. I mean—

LISER: PEPFAR, MCC.

ADEGOKE: PEPFAR. Really, some of it was very impressive. Some of it, you know, it was quite clear that a lot of those billions of dollars, some of it—a lot of it stayed in this city, right? (Laughs.) It didn’t really get to those countries in quite the same way we’d have hoped. So the U.S. was there, but perhaps not in the way that those countries would have asked as, you know, that relationship evolved over the decades. Because today, particularly where there’s democracy, and something that was said earlier on about, you know, people worried about—leaders worried about how they feed their countrymen, how they get elected again, or, you know, just—having someone talking about capacity building is probably not something that they talk about in an election yet, right? So it’s—that’s what China has done a better job of than the U.S.

BRIGETY: Yinka, we have two minutes left. And so I’m going to take the prerogative of the chair and ask you to comment on something. So you and I last saw each other at the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali. And we’ve been talking about how does America see Africa. But there was a very compelling narrative there about how Africa sees America. And I recall one senior participant saying at the conference that the political challenges domestically in the United States have become a global destabilizing force. And that that is how much of Africa sees the United States right now. Comment.

ADEGOKE: Yeah. (Laughs.) I mean, that’s the amazing thing about United States, right? Like, it’s an open country. You can see everything. You just go on Facebook. Like, so people are following this, all the drama and all—everything that happens here, close up. And, you know, in fact, that’s the thing about United States. Everyone thinks they know the United States, even when they don’t live here, because they could see everything. And for the—and the sense I got there, and just from other conversations not just when we went Kigali, it’s just that so many people just sort of think, well, you know, we thought this great country—remember how I started out, talking about the way the United States was viewed. A lot of people seem to think, well, all these years of telling us how to behave, and how to run our countries, and it doesn’t seem that different, right? The sort of the myth—the mystique is gone. I don’t know if it will come back. That, I don’t know about. But certainly the sense I get from talking to people is it’s not that. What’s it called, the shining country on the hill, or the—you know? That sort of thing is gone.

BRIGETY: Thirty seconds.

LISER: But can I—can I just say, though, that—two things. One, when people say, you know, where are the Americans, where are the U.S. companies, we have members of CCA who’ve been in Africa for a hundred years, sixty years—Coca-Cola, Visa, even folks that are in the newer sectors like Microsoft or, you know, Amazon have been there a decade now. So U.S. companies are in Africa. Now, whether we should be doing or could be doing more, that’s a different discussion. But I want to push back against the idea that American companies are not on the continent and not invested in—you know, their business, their bottom lines, are dependent on it.

The second point I want to make very quickly is people may watch a narrative at one level here in the U.S., but at the same time you’re getting, you know, sort of a negative, maybe, thoughts about what does America think of Africa. I recall that before there was even a head of Ex-Im Bank in place, they had done one of the largest loans for a gas project in Mozambique, had been approved. So what I was saying to Africans was, don’t just listen to one narrative coming out of the U.S. Also look at what’s happening. Look at the real deal. Look at what people are doing on the ground in your countries.

You know, Caterpillar, Visa. You know, just—and those are the big names. There’s also all the names of companies that people may not know—the Acrow bridges, and, you know, mid-cap companies. So I’m a real believer that American companies and the American government, even now, see the value of Africa and are engaging. Could we do more? Should we do more? I’m in that group. I raise my hand high. But there are things that are happening. And I think that we should open our eyes and engage with our African partners, you know, to look at what can we do to enhance this relationship.

BRIGETY: And, actually—

SONGWE: Two minutes—before you close, one minute. I think two things.

BRIGETY: Like the African Union, I’m going to cut your mic. (Laughs.)

SONGWE: The first thing is this administration is investing more in Africa today. So Africa wants this administration to continue investing in Africa. That’s number one.

Number two, the Africans are saddened by the tensions of democracy here, because it means that we will be even weaker there, because you used to be a good example. So essentially, we want the generations in Africa to look and say, yes, this thing is not so easy, but America course correct, because you are our only hope to fight in Africa too.

LISER: That’s a good point.

BRIGETY: And we’re done basically on time. (Laughter.) So ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. And please thank our panel for an amazing evening. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.