President Obama’s upcoming trip to Ghana is a good step in the direction towards recalibrating the United States relationship with Africa and showing both the U.S. business community and African governments that America is seriously interested in expanding its relationship with Africa.

We are optimistic that this administration will find creative ways to help support U.S. exports to Africa. African nations do not want handouts, but rather a chance to do business. We need to treat Africa as the land of opportunity that it is. One way the USG can begin this shift is to further encourage U.S. investments in Africa by tweaking a number of the trade financing vehicles that we have at our disposal. And when the USG looks at the issue of harmonizing trade preferences around the globe, we encourage them to look at the impact that this could have on Africa. While we are pushing for some major changes in America’s approach to sub-Saharan Africa in particular, we’d also note the importance of understanding the complexities of regional harmonization across the continent and how decades of conflicts have impaired the growth of infrastructure across many African nations.

As Greg Lebedev, senior counsel to the Chamber’s President and CEO and chairman of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), recently said before a joint House hearing on trade and investment in Africa, "Global business is key to American prosperity, and Africa, in our view, is an under-emphasized market opportunity...and has been for too long. A place with 53 countries, over 1000 languages, and nearly one billion people deserves attention; however, economic and political realities suggest that the American business community and probably the US Government need to recalibrate their relationship with the continent."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently launched the Africa Business Initiative. The mission of the ABI is to engage the U.S. business community on legislative policies that foster foreign direct investment in Africa, to facilitate trade between the United States and African countries, and to introduce U.S. companies to the continent’s vast economic opportunities.