Obama focuses on roads and trade facilitation in East Africa
July 01, 2013 | 07:03 PM
In Tanzania today President Barack Obama announced a “Trade Africa” initiative focused on the East African Community (EAC) — Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda — that will help those countries integrate their own economies through roads and customs procedures that would eventually make it easier for them to import goods from the United States.
Michael Froman
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters that poor roads and customs procedures make it difficult for the East African countries to trade among themselves, to export and for exports to move inland from the main port of Mombasa, Kenya.
“All of these things add cost and create a lack of competitiveness for products coming out of this region,” Froman said. “Coffee coming out of Rwanda takes 42 days. It takes 14 days to export coffee out of Colombia.”
The African Growth and Opportunity Act keeps U.S. tariffs on African products low, but “that’s a fairly minor cost compared to all the costs that these inefficiencies create in their system,” he added.
In late remarks today, Obama noted that U.S. exports to Africa have tripled in recent years, with Caterpillar selling mining trucks to Mozambique, Boeing selling airplanes to Kenya and American-made, solar-powered water treatment plants sold in Senegal and Cameroon.
But he also noted, “The entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa is still less than $2 trillion — which is about the same as Italy. Our entire trade with Africa is about the same as our trade with Brazil or South Korea — countries with a fraction of Africa’s population. Of all our exports to the world, only about two percent goes to Africa.”
Obama added that “the vast majority” of U.S. trade with Africa is with only three countries — South Africa, Nigeria and Angola — and that “we need to broaden that.”
The president called on Congress to renew AGOA, but also said that “The real answer to unlocking the next era of African growth is not in Washington, it’s here in Africa.”
Obama also announced that the U.S. interest in Africa would be sustained by missions to Africa led by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
Michael Froman
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters that poor roads and customs procedures make it difficult for the East African countries to trade among themselves, to export and for exports to move inland from the main port of Mombasa, Kenya.
“All of these things add cost and create a lack of competitiveness for products coming out of this region,” Froman said. “Coffee coming out of Rwanda takes 42 days. It takes 14 days to export coffee out of Colombia.”
The African Growth and Opportunity Act keeps U.S. tariffs on African products low, but “that’s a fairly minor cost compared to all the costs that these inefficiencies create in their system,” he added.
In late remarks today, Obama noted that U.S. exports to Africa have tripled in recent years, with Caterpillar selling mining trucks to Mozambique, Boeing selling airplanes to Kenya and American-made, solar-powered water treatment plants sold in Senegal and Cameroon.
But he also noted, “The entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa is still less than $2 trillion — which is about the same as Italy. Our entire trade with Africa is about the same as our trade with Brazil or South Korea — countries with a fraction of Africa’s population. Of all our exports to the world, only about two percent goes to Africa.”
Obama added that “the vast majority” of U.S. trade with Africa is with only three countries — South Africa, Nigeria and Angola — and that “we need to broaden that.”
The president called on Congress to renew AGOA, but also said that “The real answer to unlocking the next era of African growth is not in Washington, it’s here in Africa.”
Obama also announced that the U.S. interest in Africa would be sustained by missions to Africa led by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
