29 Jun 2023

Over 1 000 participants are expected to attend the US-Africa Business Summit 2023 to be held July 11-14 in Gaborone.

The summit is the Corporate Council on Africa’s premier annual event, bringing together African heads of state, senior US and African government officials, and top CEO’s and senior business executives from the US and Africa spanning major business sectors that are critical to the continent’s development.

Themed: Enhancing Africa’s Value in Global Value Chains, the summit comes at a time when Botswana has re-invigorated its pursuit of the transformation agenda which places the citizenry at the core of planning with well-established policy framework that seeks to promote citizen participation in economic development.

The theme also resonates with the government Reset Agenda which seeks to promote value chain beneficiations among others.

In a recent a courtesy call meeting with the Chief Executive Officer of Corporate Council on Africa, President Dr Mokgweetsi  Masisi said Botswana would be hosting the summit during a time where government’s Resent Agenda was in full swing. 

He affirmed government’s  readiness to provide technical assistance to all summit attendants to ensure that it becomes a success.

Botswana hosting the US-Africa business summit is gratifying to the  local business  community as revealed  by the Business Botswana Chief Executive  Officer, Mr Norman Moleele.

He noted that the benefits were both long and short term.

“With over 1 000 participants expected, Batswana should embrace the opportunity to forge a two-way trade and investment partnerships with the rest of the world,” he said. Mr Moleele said Botswana had over the years demonstrated that effective economic policies, good governance and investment in local processing created resilient economies, therefore the onus was on the citizenry to utilise government policies for self-empowerment.

 Economist, Mr Sennye Obuseng acknowledged government efforts of hosting international summits, saying hosting of Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) was a key component towards attainment of the economic diversification.

“MICE is important for the tourism and hospitality industry as it brings more competitiveness among different destinations, creates unprecedented employment opportunities, keeps tourism alive in off seasons, brings technological innovation, helps in cultural and knowledge exchange programmes, among other things,” he said.

In addition to the summit’s impact on building stronger US-Africa trade, investment and commercial ties, Mr Obuseng said the summit would immensely benefit the hospitality and transport sector with other opportunities trickling down the entire value chain.

He was optimistic that local participants would emerge from the summit well-versed to follow suit on value chain identification and development hence address some of the social ills including unemployment.

“For the summit to be beneficial to local participants, government needs to put in place the right frame work of incentive and improve the ease of doing business for foreign investors and private sector to strive,” he said.

Mr Obuseng said Batswana should refrain from over-dependence on government as sole employment creator, but rather tap on opportunities created to network with other industry players.  Ends