To mark the one-year anniversary since last December’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the U.S. Government’s Prosper Africa has released a groundbreaking Deal Book that demonstrates that the United States is catalyzing significant progress in trade and investment, citing the successful closure of 547 new deals totaling an estimated value of $14.2 billion in two-way trade and investment between the United States and African countries. The new figures represent an increase of 67 percent in the number and value of closed deals over 2022.
This Deal Book provides a snapshot of partnerships and deals from U.S. and African companies and investors that harness American technology, innovation and capital to deliver impactful and inclusive solutions that are tailored to the local market.
The global investment community is increasingly recognizing Africa’s extraordinary market potential and dynamism,” stated British A. Robinson, Coordinator of Prosper Africa, in the booklet’s introduction. “The continent is home to the world’s youngest population, an asset that creates significant opportunities for viable business deals that create jobs and foster shared prosperity.”
These results are an outcome of the U.S.-Africa Business Forum (USABF), where U.S. and African business leaders gathered during the Summit to focus on advancing two-way trade and investment partnerships that bolster Africa’s role in the global economy, scale innovation and entrepreneurship, and drive advancements in key sectors.
Progress on the Summit Commitments and Key Achievements from Prosper Africa Include:
British A. Robinson, appointed by the White House in July to serve as the new Prosper Africa Coordinator, has already played a leading role in global trade and investment dialogues at COP28, the 2023 AGOA Forum, in Silicon Valley and in boardrooms cross the US and Africa to scale private capital mobilization to the continent at unprecedented levels. Her signature effort is bringing sovereign funds, endowments and philanthropic resources to the table to mobilize trillions for Africa.
Prosper Africa’s U.S.-Africa Buyer-Supplier Network launched new payment platforms and demand-pull market innovations to link over 12,000 U.S. retail outlets like Walmart, Target, Krogers and Damon Worldwide with African suppliers.
To significantly increase U.S. investment into Africa, Prosper Africa led high-level U.S. institutional investor delegations to Egypt, Nigeria, Botswana, and South Africa to strengthen investor relationship-building and co-investments between the U.S. and Africa. The investor trips aim to drive large-scale investments into African infrastructure and build enduring relationships between the U.S. investment community and their African counterparts.
The Prosper Africa Catalytic Investment Facility is exponentially growing the African asset management space through catalytic partnerships with African fund managers that fuel African innovation and entrepreneurship. Since the Summit, Prosper Africa partnered with nine African asset fund managers under the investment facility with the ambitious goal of mobilizing more than $600 million in private capital. The funds have raised $101 million in private investments in sectors such as climate, health, technology, women’s empowerment, and education. In partnership with Prosper Africa, Future Africa launched a pre-accelerator that supported 26 high-impact startups with over $700,000 in direct investment.
In March, Prosper Africa mobilized $274 million in long-term financing for West Africa’s rapidly growing housing sector. This landmark partnership with Bank of America Securities, Inc, Brean Capital, LLC, The Bank of New York Mellon, Togo’s Caisse Régionale de Refinancement Hypothécaire (CRRH), USAID, and the DFC opens new opportunities for U.S. investment in Africa’s emerging markets and provides an avenue for West Africans to gain greater access to homeownership. This deal represents an innovative approach to mobilize transparent, market-oriented financing at scale and is expected to help about 6,000 households gain access to homeownership.
In April and September, Prosper Africa embarked on a groundbreaking collaboration with the U.S. Embassy in Kenya to host the U.S.-Kenya roadshow with stops in New York, Chicago and San Francisco to showcase Kenya as an attractive investment destination to U.S. investors and present lucrative investment opportunities in the apparel, tech, and private investment sectors. Each roadshow stop featured a mix of panel discussions, business matchmaking, and networking. In San Francisco, Kenyan President William Ruto addressed leading U.S. technology companies and investors, and U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, President Ruto, and Prosper Africa Coordinator British A. Robinson met with U.S. business executives and visited U.S. companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Levi Strauss, Google, among others.
At COP28, the USAID and Prosper Africa, joined a public-private partnership to create the Green Guarantee Company (GGC), the first ever privately run guarantee company devoted to catalyzing green bonds and loans in emerging markets. With a $100 million balance sheet, subject to final documentation, the Green Guarantee Company will unlock an estimated $1 billion in new mainstream private capital for climate finance by 2024. By taking a blended finance approach – combining donor funding and private capital – the U.S. government is delivering innovative approaches to mobilizing and localizing greater private investments to fund climate projects.
