Jean Raymond Boulle, Corporate Council Africa 2009

"CCA has concluded what many call our best summit ever. I can’t be sure. Each summit with which I have been associated has had its own “personality”. The success of any summit is often best judged from a distance after seeing what really resulted from the thousands of individual interactions. The 2009 summitbroke new ground because it was not simply a two and a half day affair. Instead, a full week was filled with meetings and events. In my mind, it was those extra days that added to the success of this summit, perhaps as much as did the major address by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the presentations in the presidential plenary involving four African presidents and the chairman of the African Union Commission, Africa’s highest civil servant. From this summit are already some very clear results that have implications not simply for CCA but for American relationships with other countries. For that reason, it will be important to follow up on these meetings with all due deliberation and commitment. Doing so will serve CCA’s mission of fostering greater business and trade between the United States and the nations of Africa, and will help advance CCA members’ activities in Africa, something that is of utmost importance to our national strategic interests. The week began with an unprecedented meeting of our international counterparts from Europe, South Africa, Canada and Japan. These business councils on Africa represented no fewer than 15 countries and met together to find common ground upon which we could increase partnership opportunities in Africa among our respective members. We also had an opportunity to better understand the challenges each of our organizations faces in meeting our common missions of increasing investment and trade in Africa for our members. We discovered that we had much in common. We agreed to make known more readily to our different organizations business partnership opportunities in Africa. We believe this will have long-term implications for the future of trade and development in Africa. We also may be able to develop a more coordinated private sector approach to G-20 meetings. Nearly all nations in the G-20 readily acknowledge the importance of the private sector to development, but seldom are private sector views actually incorporated in the deliberations. We now have moved our organizations into the possibility of a more coordinated approach. We also conducted three bilateral “Doing Business in….” seminars. The seminars focused on Angola, Ethiopia and Namibia and each attracted no fewer than 150 participants. A great many partnerships and new opportunities may transpire from these seminars. At the very least these meetings strengthened government and private sector receptivity to American business in these three nations, which were initially selected partly as a result of their own initiative and partly because each presents special opportunities for U.S. business, large and small. Angola is the CNBC’s Erin Burnett introduces the 2009 Summit Presidential Plenary, moderated by Fleishman-Hillard President & Senior Partner Jack Modzelewski. Participating heads of state included Paul Kagame (Rwanda); John Atta Mills (Ghana); Denis Sassou Nguesso (Republic of Congo); and Fradique de Menezes (São Tomé & Principe). The presidents were joined by African Union Commission Chair Jean Ping and SEACOM CEO Brian Herlihy.

President’s Message: Looking Back on the 2009 U.S.-Africa Business Summit "

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