Business leaders representing diverse resources across the African continent gathered on Wednesday morning to discuss the fast-growing economies, global partnerships and technological advancements in Africa's 54 countries.
The forum, Northeastern's inaugural African Business Conference, comes as the continent is poised to emerge as a global economic powerhouse, according to The World Bank.
“Africa is poised to become one of the world's most important economic regions,” he said Flori Leeser, president and CEO of the Corporate Council for Africa. The organization works to encourage trade and investment between the US and African countries.
Leeser showed the new African Continental Free Trade Area as an economic game-changer for the continent. The deal, signed by the 54 countries last year, means the continent can operate as a single market, combining the purchasing and trading power of some 1.3 billion people.
“When the 54-country African Continental Free Trade Area is fully implemented, it will comprise the world's fifth-largest economic bloc, representing a huge source of jobs, consumers, innovation and power to shape the global economy,” said Liser. .
The conference, with a host Northeastern's African Global Initiative and Center for Pop-up Marketsattracted a diverse audience with virtual participants from Hong Kong, Greece, Argentina, Rwanda and more.
“Our goal today is to chart a path of engagement with Africa. Africa is a continent of growth and innovation and is home to many Northeastern students, faculty and leaders,” he said. Joseph E. Aoun, president of the Northeast. He added that the conference is an example of Northeastern's “true global spirit.”
“We are excited to build mutually empowering relationships with our African partners,” Aoun said.
Dilip Pal, chief financial officer of Safaricom, detailed the communications company's successes not only financially, but also socially. The company provides mobile and wireless connections to 40 million customers from its headquarters in Kenya.
“At Safaricom, our purpose is to change lives and that has been a guiding light throughout. Likewise, we are intensely focused on building a sustainable business and believe we can only succeed if the community around us is successful,” said Pal.
In addition to creating 90,000 jobs, the company provides increased access to healthcare and education, according to Sustainability Report 2021. But perhaps the company's most significant creation, Pal said, was through a program called M-PESA which provided access to wireless banking at a time when nine out of 10 transactions in Kenya involved cash.
“At the time we launched the services, we expected we would only have about a million customers at most. However, by the second year, we had two million customers. This showed that we had solved a real customer need and solved a real customer problem,” Pal said.
Paying utility bills could be a daily process, with customers traveling to their bank to get cash, only to then stand in line for hours to pay their electricity and water bills.
“Our customers can now send and receive money and make payments from over 200 markets worldwide,” Pal said.
But diverse and developing countries across Africa continue to face ongoing issues such as corruption, terrorism and diaspora in a diaspora largely created by the transatlantic slave trade, which involved the transfer of nearly 13 million Africans into slavery across the Atlantic for a period of 400 years.
“Africa has experienced the worst and the best, and the result of this global Africa is us, we are citizens from everywhere,” he said. Ambassador Rama Yade. Yade, who was born in Senegal, is senior director of the Africa Center at Atlantic Council. The council is an American think tank that focuses on the global economy and international security.
“We are in a period where the continent is finally recovering this demographic loss. We are entering a new period, a new cycle,” Yade said, noting that Africans currently living in countries around the world can be an asset.
“The diaspora can provide bridges and answers to global challenges,” Yade said.
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