The US Africa Business Summit took off today in Gaborone, with over 1,200 delegates registered and the promise of deals being made across various economic sectors.
The summits, organised by the Corporate Council on Africa - a trade association focusing on strengthening commercial relationships between the United States and Africa – are the premier platforms for bringing together African heads of state and other senior US and African government officials with top African and American senior business executives.
On Monday, Botswana Investment and Trade Centre CEO, Keletsositse Olebile told media that the organisation is ready to capture the attention of an array of institutional investors seeking to channel capital investments into Botswana.
“Our value proposition is simple as we engage investors, pick Botswana as a landing pad for investments, and position Botswana as an investment hub for your capital,” he said.
The CEO buttressed Botswana’s value proposition saying it has furthered been enhanced by the country’s ratification of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement which is the world’s largest free trade area developed under the auspices of the African Union (AU) to enable the free flow of goods and services across the continent.
“The recently ratified AfCFTA agreement strengthens our communication and should excite investors to come to the mainland so that they can launch into the rest of Africa from a stable jurisdiction,” he said.
Olebile also said BITC had made efforts to ensure that the “Summit cake is split evenly” revealing that contracted companies for the four-day event were mainly Batswana-owned.
“When it came to services like catering, we ensured that we don’t just contract one company, we contracted many locally owned companies to ensure that we split the cake evenly,” he said.
Corporate Council on Africa officials revealed that amongst the more than 1,000 delegates are up to eight institutional investors from America handling fund in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
