Ambassador Sanders Wraps Up Her 2019 Fall Rooney Scholar Speeches & Lectures

Ambassador Sanders wraps up her Rooney Scholar 2019 six month stint at Robert Morris University (RMU) with a major keynote speech entitled "Why Africa Should Be Important to the United States," at the Pittsburgh's World Affairs Council luncheon at the famed and iconic Omni William Penn Hotel. The packed room received the perspective and real world examples from Sanders' extensive diplomatic and business experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sanders business colleague Ms. Span &
RMU University Professor Kohun

Dr. Sanders laid out the US National Security reasons for more sustained engagement in the region such as security and trade, but underscored the need for more direct contact with African presidents and leaders on a regular basis, along lines of holding comprehensive heads of state level meetings at least once a year or biannually -- similar to what China, and now Russia does (the later held its first Africa heads of state meeting in Sochi this past October 2019). In addition Sanders outlined both Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSAfrica) positives as well as the challenges that remain in key development sectors from agriculture to manufacturing to infrastructure. She also discussed further what she calls the "China Factor," in Africa, providing her take on what sectors as well as what approaches are ready made for U.S. intervention and where the U.S. value-added can be better such as improved and fairer business, trade, training, negotiation and training practices -- avoiding many of the debt-driven deals currently plaguing many SSAfrica nations, where key land and/or single major commodity countries are driven back into the old debt burdens of the 1960s-early 2000s. (Sanders herself work on the Africa debt burden issue for many years in the mid-2000s). It took decades for most African countries to overcome these historic debt burdens, and many still suffer the consequences as they struggle with social and economic reform or seek to achieve or maintain global best practices on "debt-to-GDP" (gross domestic product) ratios. The Ambassador also called on the U.S. to begin now to help the region in these areas as its rolls out and stands up the landmark Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA), which will make the Region's  one of the world's largest trading bloc with an estimated  $3 trillion value. Dr. Sanders also talk extensively as an advocate for Africa's small and medium size businesses (referred to in the Africa Region as SMEs). The event was followed by a book signing of Sanders' second book "The Rise of Africa's Small and Medium Size Business," which has been well-received in the field for its meshing of both policy and practice. The Pittsburgh World Affairs Council book signing for Sanders, the 35th event for the book, followed the keynote.

Sanders other keynote lectures included a Davos-style lecture of the various SSAfrican cultures that the Ambassador has worked with or lived with over her diplomatic and advocacy work in the region, stressing the importance of one of her signature messages "understanding human cultural communications," and given her expertise in information systems and communications lecturing on the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the "Future of Work," in general (from AR-VR-IOBs-IOTs)*,  and in particular how young entrepreneurs and development sector advocates in SSAfrica are using technology to help address many of the Region's development issues in areas from infrastructure to manufacturing to agriculture. 



RMU President Dr. Howard (l),
wife Barbara &
Dr. Sanders in front
Rooney Scholar House, RMU Campus

Other subjects taught to RMU's undergraduates, graduate and doctoral students by Sanders while serving as the Rooney Scholar included topics as far ranging as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Health, Education, and Food Security (as Sanders', as CEO-FEEEDS, is a major advocate of the SGDs); Africa & Technology; Global Writing for journalism students; Technology & Security in the Developing World; A Political Scientist View of World Challenges, Intercultural Communication, Cultural Intelligence -- to name few -- along with participating in panels on careers for women's leadership, public policy, and the challenge of electricity in Africa -- Guinea as a case study. The Rooney Scholar program is a result of the generous support and commitment of the Rooney Family to global learning, where Global Scholars such as Ambassador Sanders, share their scholarly academic and practical experiences with the students of RMU.

*Augmented Reality-Virtual Reality-Internet of Biologicals/Bodies-Internet of Things

A FEEEDS BlogSpot

Can Africa's New Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCTA) Transform the Region? One Key Will Be Keeping SMEs in Mind!

With the coming into force of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCTA), hopes and goals are that the AFCTA will not only help transform the region's economic sectors, but equally as important, help with job creation for the region's population of nearly 1.3 billion, which is on track to reach 2.4 billion by 2050, with Africa's youth represent over half of these figures.



Africa Map (open source)

It is this latter point -- job creation -- that for many will make the real difference in changing the lives of so many young Africans overtime and, in turn, grow the region's middle class. Estimates are that the Regions middle class is roughly 300 million, and it is fundamental that this number increases in order to demonstrate an improvement in the quality of life. Thus, there are great hopes among Africa's young people that the AFCTA will do this as the free movement of goods and services increase. What will be key as the AFCTA gets stood up, is for it to ensure there are special initiatives (or windows) for small businesses, know in the region as small and medium size enterprises, or SMEs.  Thus far, SMEs are discussed very little in concrete terms in the context of the AFCTA, but what is needed are special inter-regional facilities for SMEs to assist with cross-border and regional trade, with possibly an AFCTA-approved one-stop window to help SMEs through the new processes. Additionally giving SMEs a seat at the table in any AFCTA meeting will be important along with a "SME Office" being included in the new AFCTA's secretariat.  Just like other developed world regions, small businesses are fundamental to development, trade, growing the middle class, and job creation, and they will contribute the same to help Africa continue to move forward.

By way of background, the AFCTA was first signed on March 21, 2018, in Kigali Rwanda, with an initial 22 countries signing up (https://au.int › cfta › about). By July 2019, all 54 African nations had signed -- making the Continent potentially a $USD 2.4 trillion trading block. The rather quick turn-around on the AFCTA being signed by 54 nations in slightly over a year left many traditional doubters who touted the mantra that the "AFCTA will never be fully ratified," and again left flying in the wind -- having based their sentiments on the region's history of having previous draft agreements languished for decades. .

2019 AGOA Forum. Hosted by
Ivorian President Ouattara

So, what's next? There is a lot of filling in the blanks to do. With the headquarters slated to be in Accra, Ghana, first steps for this mega-trade behemoth, will be trifold:
 -- Policy formulation, including harmonizing trade tariffs,
--  Infrastructure development, including the building of the Ghana HQ, and;
-- Technical assistance, including on how to run a large trade organization.


However these three areas must be managed through the vision and leadership of Africa nations. Furthermore, there are still underlying questions as to how Africa's leading partners (China, the U.S.,  Europe, and possibly a post-Brexit UK), are going to engage with the AFCTA, given the number of existing bilateral trade arrangements, and those that are being courted for the future. Reports also are that China has already agreed to build the Ghana-based HQ.

As for the U.S., at the recent August 2019 US-Africa African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum, in Abidjan, West Africa (which FEEEDS attended)  the importance of the AFCTA was raised further. Of note, AGOA is the only U.S. annual meeting with African Trade Ministers, but also thus far, the only large-scale yearly event the U.S. holds with a region that will eventually become the most populous Continent in the world. (https://agoa.info; https://www.trade.gov).

At the AGOA Forum, AFCTA was the marquee policy noted by every African trade minister at every roundtable and every plenary session. The message to the U.S. and all partners in attendance is "there is no day light among us," on how Africa's future  trade relationships will and shall proceed, and "efforts that are not inline with this direction will be concerning."

In reading the tea leaves then, we all need to do the utmost to help the AFCTA succeed. To do so is in our interest as we in America look for sustainable trading partners, and markets for our goods and services. Remember the three areas I mentioned above -- policy formulation, infrastructure development, and technical assistance -- as well as having an emphasis on SMEs. The U.S. can provide value added in all these areas and we should because we do these things very well. These are our strengths and we should be at the table with our African partners as they set out to put in place and operationalize one of the most important trade institutions since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on January 1, 1995. (https://www.wto.org).

Country Flags from 2019 AGOA Forum participants

A FEEEDS BlogSpot Series