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good morning everybody we're very excited about today's presentation opportunities for trade and investment with africa and our guest speaker toyin who will introduce in a couple of minutes i just wanted to let everybody know this event is being co-hosted by two different world affairs councils the nebraska world affairs council and the indiana council on world affairs so we're very excited to have a joint operation here so i'll just take about a minute and explain who the nebraska world affairs council is and then i'll hand it off to the president of the indiana council on world affairs larry cimino to say a few words about what they do and then we'll hand it off to the moderator who will introduce the speaker formally so my name is michael adams and i'm a director of the nebraska world affairs council we've been around since 1972 in various iterations so we're coming up pretty soon to the 50th anniversary which is exciting we are we're a nonpartisan nonprofit membership organization and our mission is to provide educational programs and engagement opportunities together with partners to our three targeted sectors which are students young professionals and community leaders we hope that they will become competent informed global citizens in this very complex interconnected world that we all live in we encourage above all citizen-to-citizen diplomacy which we feel is a way to promote peace and mutual respect so that we can all thrive uh why does nebraska even really care about world affairs we're a small rural state we're in fact we're 37th in terms of population in the u.s but in some export categories we're in the top five and hopefully we'll we'll talk about some of that today in fact exports in nebraska provide 62 000 jobs and represent nine percent of nebraska's economy our programs at the nebraska world affairs council range on topics such as food security conflict resolution climate u.s foreign policy human rights international trade cultural heritage and many many others but you get the general idea that we're what we're focusing on i invite all of you to follow us on facebook and learn more about our programs and events global citizens are needed here please consider joining us thank you very much so i will now hand it off to larry samino larry is actually originally from omaha he's now in indiana and he's president of the indiana council on world affairs so larry tell us a little bit about your organization thank you michael and good morning everyone and on behalf of our indiana council on world affairs i'd like to extend my greeting greetings to miss troyan umassiri and members of the indiana council as well as the nebraska participants and i want to thank laura and michael adams for this opportunity to partner on this important program i spoke with the indiana economic development corporation before we signed on and they're quite interested in expanding indiana business ties in africa especially regarding foreign direct investment opportunities and so we really believe this subject's important to our indiana businesses and a valuable opportunity to learn about trends in african governance civil society and culture uh coincidentally i'm actually coming to you today from omaha which as michael said is where i grew up and i spend a little bit of time here with my mother so for more information about our indiana council on world affairs and all of our programs please take a look at our website it's indianaworld.org or our facebook page now our next distinguished speaker program will be on thursday november 19th i will be featuring dr norman sartorius he's the former director of the division of mental health at the world health organization and he'll be coming to us live from geneva switzerland so if you're interested in in the role of multinational organizations particularly in this time of pandemic i think you'll really enjoy this program um our indiana friends will be hearing a little bit more about this next week and if you're interested find us on our webpage anyone else so i want to welcome everyone and i want to just turn this back to laura because i'm excited to get on with uh learning more from our distinguished speaker today thank you larry and hello everyone good morning and i have the pleasure of serving as the moderator and i also serve as a senior advisor for the nebraska world affairs council and i'm going to say toyan's bio and then we will let toyan open it up with her slides and then we look forward to a wonderful dialogue of questions and answers toyan umasiri is the founder of the acclaimed trade with africa business summit and the ceo of nazarew llc she spent over a decade in corporate america at both walmart headquarters in bentonville arkansas and whirlpool corporation hq in benton harbor michigan as ceo of nazaru llc she connects business stakeholders to african markets through trade and investment facilitation market insights trade events consulting and training toyan also serves as ambassador for intra african trade fair by appointment of the african export import bank afrex in bank and africa and the african union the governing body of the 55 african nations and i just have a few ground rules so everybody behaves this morning we would love you to keep on mute so we can have our full focus on toyan and tell if you're asked um to speak up for a question please show your video so toyan can see you if you feel comfortable no pressure if not and we're gonna have our chat section really where you can just house your questions and i'll be moderating i'll be looking at those as well and so other members of the team and then finally we just asked you to be kind and respectful and we look forward to this great conversation toyan are you ready to go yes wow thank you so much i want to thank you laura michael larry the team at indiana and put the indiana and nebraska team thank you so much um this presentation is quite unique because i pre i actually put it together just for this group the reason is because i really love this group because you're already globally minded so i don't have to convince you to think global you know we talk about acts local think global so my powerpoint i actually designed it specifically for everyone on this group because i want to get past the why africa to ow how do you engage what are the sectors what are the opportunities so thank you so much i'm going to quickly run through my slides because i really love q a i want to know what's on your mind and i've already seen some amazing questions so i'm super excited to get to the meat of this as well so give me a moment to just pull up my slides right now and i i hope you can see it clearly awesome so the first message is africa is the future um why is africa the future when you think about the data the statistics um all the trains that we're seeing right now it does show africa to the to be the next economic frontier after china so let me point a few things that are going on right now from a data point when you think about world bank data um imf data as well the region of africa so the continent of africa which is various nations um the population is now projected to double which is currently at 1.1 billion it's been projected to double to 2.2 billion by 2050 and this is a you know population growth that they've been monitoring where while other western nations have been shrinking in population when they look at the population of the continent in the 1980s and its current population under trend it shows that more babies are being born right so if you're in the baby industry i know there are a lot of activities happening in that space like everything that supports um both of the new population that creates new opportunities for people also before prior to kovid 19 um african nations like the african continent actually had about six of the top f 10 fastest growing economy we all know the impact kovid 19 has had on um economics around the world but what that really means is that um the the pace there's a fast pace of um impact in terms of um policy adjustments um at world bank doing business indexes the speed at which policies were being implemented and adopted was really growing faster on the continent and it doesn't say that the continent is where it needs to be it just shows that there's change happening um at a rapid face or pace um in certain regions on the continent and that calls for global attention you also think about the youth population between now and 2050 there are going to be a billion people headed on the continent and right now um you know the statistics say 60 to 70 percent of the population of africa actually is within the youth under 35. so that shows that in terms of the population and the workforce the productive center of the future is actually going to be on the continent when you think about the aging population of orders okay vicky can you mute yourself so when we also think about agriculture right now um there's a lot of work going into that space and the continent actually has the world's 60 of the world's remaining arable land and when you think about food security for regions that currently are strained in that aspect there's a lot of activities happening because when you then you know growing population those food insecurity issues become more dynamic so it becomes a very very important topic in terms of the focus on agriculture is really really massive on the continent and it creates opportunities because one thing i tell people is if you're trying to find a way to engage listen to the aspirations of africans so if you listen to what um the the the african nations are trying to accomplish vis-a-vis agriculture you can easily see okay what products do you have what technical capacities do you have what how can you support that growth of the agricultural space sector so that's something very very important right there when you also talk about um urbanization a lot of that is making um people from the rural parts to move into cities there's now a growing middle class and when you think about the advance of technology and mobile phones and you think about what's going on in kenya um with the adoption of technology with blockchain um with mobile technology they're actually regions on the continent that are actually outpacing the rest of the world in technology adoption so those are some of the things that you know people need to watch out for as well you know a lot of times before uh mobile phones were introduced on the continent years ago um people looking at the numbers would say oh can africans afford it well guess what that's been proven that people are affording you know the affluent the middle class they're buying two three cell phones um they are there now you know buying cars and and all of those things which creates um dynamic opportunities for for global players that are looking to yeah so um again fast pace of urbanization when you think about the real estate industry there are regions right now that's um that there's a shortage of housing supplies we've done some work in terms of connecting affordable housing solutions to the region because um that's something that a lot of the governments are looking at there's a shortage of affordable housing on the continent um and this probably the last point on this slide is probably something to really look at when you think about policy management um last year 2019 africa nations under the african union did something incredible um by signing the african continental free trade agreement africa now represents the world's largest trade bloc and there's a whole lot of work going on in that space and we're super connected to to this activity which leads me to my next next slide to show some of the things we are doing to bring more information to people so before i go there though um a lot of times people ask me what are the growth sectors right what are the opportunities what sector guess what every area is growing that's what this slide is about people want to know you know we talk about health care creative industry and their conversations we have about the movie industry and you know tyler perry connecting the continent like kenya to the um american movie industry this is mining there's logistics we talk about the link in africa plan the reason i'm talking about this is we host an annual summit called the trade with africa business summit we're now in our fourth year and each year we talk about all of this is from manufacturing to agriculture to education to energy to infrastructure divide and development to um you know trade financing like last year we had um experts import bank of america and then the african exports in broadband come in and share with us in terms of how they support i'm driving um increase u.s africa trade so you know if you're asking me what sectors i would say you pick you know um there's just so much work going on across board right now and now in in the follow-up slides i have i'll be sharing a little bit more so what do we do at nazare um i know laura shared a little bit about my background but for me i came into this conversation strictly from a commercial standpoint um i spent time in corporate america so when i came into this conversation um i realized that there was a lot of hate versus trade and basically i said you know what my thing is commercial how do we talk about trade which is buying and selling how do we talk about investment opportunities fdi all of those things so at nasa we've been on a journey of building platforms that allows us to connect um interested parties back to the continent we have to trade with african network which is a global network of stakeholders that we now train we we do a lot of global events um we've moved it more digital now with kovid 19 we also owe the annual trade with africa business summit we we've also now recently launched an exporter business listing because a lot of times people want to know where can you find people who is doing what how can we start building relationship relationships and with the afcfta which is the african um coincidental free trade agreement i recently hosted um global leaders at the afc fta roundtable where we had chief economists of the world bank we had the african union we had the united nations conference on trade and development we had brookings institution we had them talk to us about the current state of the adoption and implementation of the afcfca we have all of this content available on our platform we have tons of content because what we know what we've come to see is that um there's room for us to engage with people but there's a need to show people how and that has to do with a lot of hand holding we also partner with the african union i mean in in increasing adoption of the afcft and the implementation i also have um working with the african bank which is the is the multilateral it's it's a it's the bank owned by about 50 governments and they're responsible for you know financing exporting po just like the u.s exim bank and one of the things that the african union and the afro-exim bank they're working on which i'll show more in detail because i serve as an ambassador for that engagement is realizing that in order for us to activate the afc fta the african continental free trade agreement there's a need to bring key stakeholders together and in 2018 they launched the first ever intro african trade fair so that's the iatf at the bottom of the screen the next iatf is going to be in 2021 but what i want to show you because this is what you're not going to see on tv on the western tv i want to show you a video uh quickly a video of clips from our engagement in 2018 of how we can vastly the continent of how the african union and the african bank is connecting private sectors i'll show you that video because now we're also working on ramping up the 2021 because for people to engage you have to show up you have to show up to this dynamic engagement so permit me to show you about a five minute clip um of the iatf 2018 activation and then i'll share with you what we have planning um to show people what what's actually known because you're not going to see this on the western media [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [M sic] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] okay so the reason i showed that video was because i was actually present on ground for the iatf 2018 and i'm also part of activating that for the 2021. the reason is because as i was in cairo egypt for the 2018 i looked around me i looked at the exhibition or the massive exhibition all and there were thous over a thousand exhibitors and i did not see american companies so i flew in from america but i saw chinese companies italian like people from all over the world exhibiting connecting doing business doing trade engaging like my goodness nobody in america is seeing this on tv right now like like nobody's talking about this and here am i in cairo egypt at the one of the most important engagement because that event brings all the key stakeholders together because from a business engagement standpoint you could go from country to country right trying to establish partnerships engagement but the reason the african union and the african bank put this together is to fast-track those engagements so the next one is going to be in rwanda um it's being hosted by the government of rwanda and um in dece on december 2nd i'll be doing some more activities with the afroexim bank and showcasing what we're going to be doing next year um i'll be hosting it here in chicago for them um in 2018 i actually hosted an event in chicago for the bank but with kovid 19 we're now going virtual so one thing i also wanted to share um the slide we're looking at i'm going to pull it up a little bit now but it's a slide from one of the um classes i teach because when people come in and say okay what are the opportunities how do i dive in this is a slide um that i teach from from a class a master class i teach called the trade and investment facilitation just to help people understand like where do you want to play so on the left i see trade you talk about trade on the right you have investment when it comes to trade buyer seller relationships which are you the buyer are you the seller because there are opportunities on both sides or are you helping to facilitate that conversation and there's opportunity to help with market access development market access um strategy then there's exp promotion on both sides so us promoting its products to the african continent and the african continent also promoting its product to u.s and global stakeholders on the investment side there's investor relations on both sides i'm actually now um based on some partnership with um world business chicago we're planning an activation for chicago africa engagement march of 2021 so next year we'll be unveiling more things in terms of connecting chicago land uh more to trade um with africa so we're going to look at specific sectors like we talked about the movie like um in kenya for example um the person in charge of um you know everything media everything that is showed on on the tv screen is looking for global partnership in terms of in that setting and chicago was like hey we are less expensive than hollywood you can shoot some movies here so we're going to be doing that march of 2021. so um this is just a slider game um that i that i use to to drive people when i'm talking about um trade and investment facilitation in terms of trying to get people to go into the weed so for me um that's important it's important to say okay why africa why now um what are the opportunities how do you engage and then sharing what we are doing and saying hey did africa is on the move he's on the move um it might take a couple more years for media the western media to really cover what is happening but hopefully that video tells you that um the africa is not waiting um for that and i'm super excited to be part of that movement um this is a picture of um in 2018 my first ever trade with africa business summit we hosted it in arkansas and walmart was one of our sponsors tyson foods was one of the sponsors as well and we talked about agriculture retail e-commerce technology um it was a two-day event two and a half days actually because of the welcoming dinner but yes so nasa is committed to africa i'm super excited to to to step into this space i consider it an underserved space and um you know we help people i i have lots of story to share but i i really do want to spend time answering questions that we have on mine so i'm going to stop right there i'm going to stop sharing and i'll hand over back to miss laura yes thank you laura what questions do you have for me wonderful and we um we have some great questions coming in our chat and we had some questions that were provided prior but just to get into more specifics so we covered the why the why now um just this changing narrative in africa and um really the audience is is uh from from the trade opportunities which specific countries on the continent of africa do you think are the most promising trade with the us was one of the initial questions sent in yes yes um and now that i stopped sharing i just saw some of the child that were trying to tell me about the audio so i apologize about the audio um um but i can share that link the link to the audio um for people who want to follow it so this is what i say it depends it depends on what it is you're trying to accomplish because there are various maturity level based on if you're looking at technology versus agriculture versus infrastructure versus energy versus telecommunications vessels mining so for example if you're thinking about technology you think about kenya okay you think about kenya in terms of the you know even the us and kenya they're working on um some tree free trade agreements right now i believe this week um kenya just did some preliminary signing with uk just in time before the british exits completely went into effect completely right so if it's technology you think about kenya you know when you think about healthcare you think about south africa is quite sophisticated nigeria really really really because of the population size it's ripe and we also bring speakers when it comes to health care particularly because of the size of nigeria it's about 200 million people so healthcare need is massive in that space when you think about commodities you think about um depending if it's export or import you think about cordovoid you think about ghana right so um you know i mean in august when we had the virtual summit i actually had um the managing director of the american uh morocco chamber of commerce share with us in terms of what they're doing with solar energy morocco morocco now as the largest solar farm in the world um people don't know that so she shared because they don't have natural resources like they don't have oil so they've had to lean into clean energy and in terms of their um you know the expansion in in solar one of the things they also shared with us in morocco is that morocco is actually used by u.s company as a launching pad into spain so so there are different things happening um people are using different regions on the continent for different um positioning or depending on the strategy but one thing i would just say to look at would be the risk reward um you know look at it from a risk reward um lens there are regions that is it high risk low reward i i reward you know high risk i reward or low risk high reward low risk low reward so that's the lens that i would encourage people to look at if we reduce support our clients um so if you have specific products of or specific sectors that you're trying to penetrate the region on then you can start laser focus on the content but under the aafcfta i encourage people to now have more of a continent-wide strategy in the past you would be looking nation to nation south africa kenya um but now you almost want to start looking at the continent of establishing in one region but having an understanding that you want to expand wonderful thank you twin there's there's a lot of excitement over here so i want you to continue to look in this chat but there's been two from kenneth and barbara they're asking about china and um we have hold on let me let me the the chat's moving very fast how important is china in building africa's infrastructure and then barbara asked um the locals seemed to have the belief that the chinese investment had no strings tied to it what is your impression okay so the second question i would say the locals don't believe that it's more of um how do you play your options okay so i try to explain this in an interesting way let's just say the us and the west is africa's for my boyfriend [Laughter] and then there's a there's a new boyfriend in town that is vying for africa but um i think africa is sitting in a good place to say africa has options right and they get to decide how they want to play who they want to play with and under what terms granted part of the training because i do in partnership with african union i do train government officials um just a couple of weeks i actually train government officials from 14 countries so we do advise them if you look at the the screen what i said in terms of legal framework um the map i shared before i talked about the legal framework we do notch them to make sure they understand what it is they're signing that they do not just sign the future of africa away so um you know being an african it just says at least at this point in time in history africa has options and they get to decide who they want to play with so that's the way i see it now it's just like boyfriend you you might love this person and they don't love their boyfriend right you don't you don't love who they're rolling with but uh you know it's their choice but um like i said personally there are things because we do play some advice advisory role so in some of the advisory world we're able to say hey check this out you know but again um the future of africa will be determined by africans thank you and and to everyone they're wanting they didn't get your email so um from the last slide so if your question doesn't get answered toyan you will we can share your email but um for our honored guest with larry i would like to see if larry would he sent in some questions prior larry is there any that specifically pop out to you from her presentation well one thing i was curious about is the uh i understand that the african union has set up a representational mission in the us and they had an ambassador i don't know can you tell us what the status is of that mission whether a new ambassador has been named and then what role would they play in facilitating some pan-african trade opportunities i mean is it opportunity there are 55 countries in africa and a lot of americans couldn't tell you the names of the states between and indiana much less what those opportunities represent so what what's uh what resources whether it's through you whether it's through the uh the representational mission in washington uh what opportunities are there for someone to help pull those together and help companies not have to learn how to do business in 55 countries but how to do something that's more of a one-stop shop to enter the larger african market yes oh wow you i love you i love that question we usually talk about the one window in terms of if you're looking for information where do you go to so when it comes to the african union i can talk about um the work we do so um i work both with the home office in addis ababa so last year 2020 um 2019 the ambassador for you know it's like they have various um departments under the african union and there's a department responsible for trade and industry across the continent and the commissioner for trade and industry who is the ambassador his excellency ambassador muchanga actually flew him for my engagement last year and she came to chicago with um or two other members of his team and his senior advisory team and the reason we brought him on board was because of the afcfca because he is team is responsible for um implementing you know the creation the adoption the implementation of the afc fta so whenever any nation um ratifies the afc fta it sits on the stable so he he kindly you know graciously came into chicago to give us an extensive presentation so that's one in addition because we've established the afc fta roundtable to add to people have to stay abreast because it's it's like a it's a moving train it's moving really fast january 1 it's going to be when people will start trading originally it was october but because of kovi they moved it to january one so from the afcfc roundtable we pulled on them again right so that's why the content is available so i pulled on nissino a special advisor to speak on the current um status of the implementation and adoption of afcfta so the af the afcfc roundtable is my attempt every quarter every three months we're going to be having that round table i'm pulling on them and saying hey what's the what's what's the progress being made in december they're having an extraordinary summit with all the heads of state it will be the final yay we're good to go january 1. so that's something we work with the home office on now when it comes to the washington dc they've not um they've not um established a new ambassador but they have what they call a charge their fears it's like a french name and that's the person i currently collaborate with and you know through him we're able to work with the um african embassies in the in the us because that's that's his responsibility that's this coverage area in terms of communicating messaging to um the council consulates the african consulate and the um and the african embassies so that's he governs that and i collaborate and work with him as well we also have another age another growing um representation that most people do not know about um and and i work with them as well so there's the embassies in dc but there's the consulate that is located across the u.s right so for example when i did um the trade with africa summit in arkansas and all my engagements will be under a particular consulate depending on what country now when i moved into chicago i'm having to work with different councillors so the consulates are probably more important to you outside of dc that's one of the things i tried to tell people so the consulates in chicago they are more hands-on when it comes to um private sector engagement whereas the embassies they lean more on diplomacy that's what i have found okay so i you know um so now the african groups of councils general they are now all coming together outside of the embassies and their chairperson is the um honorable um ben o'conne in the consul general of nigeria in uh in new york is the chairman of the council's generals of africa and i've been asked i've spoken to that group before so they're just different players and they do different things but i say in private sector i would almost encourage people to lean in heavily on the consulates um you will be it will be easier for you to reach them than for the um ambassadors who govern more on diplomacy so that's my two cents wonderful toy and we've got a lot of excitement still in the chat and i put your email and your websites in the chat so people can follow up with you but now i um to try to get all the questions in michael our other host with the nebraska world affairs questions he had some questions about the export piece um michael would you like to ask that question and then we'll try to keep burning through the rest of them troy and thank you very much that's very useful information a lot of new information in the chat room i listed the top 10 export products from nebraska this is 2019 data top 10 exports from nebraska and also the top 10 export categories from indiana and just to sort of help us those are our strengths i'm interested to know those particular product categories which ones do you feel we should prioritize for africa and i gather that it depends on the product and the country making that match technology in kenya and so on and really uh from nebraska's perspective if we look at the top export markets really the price the primary one in africa is south africa and we you know then it drops way down after that so i know there are opportunities there that we have to just match countries and products so it's it's um not something i know you can fully explain now but uh maybe following up it would be useful could you could you help me list it because i've not been able to find alice could you just leave the list the top call out the top three or top four and let uh maybe i can respond quickly to that okay so for nebraska you know we're very agricultural oriented yes and some of those categories were in the top five of the us states okay soybeans would be number one beef meat that's typically frozen as well as some live animal exports corn of course and then agricultural equipment uh harvesters thrashers uh irrigation equipment and so on and so those those are the primary ag related ones and indiana is also an ag state maybe i'll let larry talk talk about that you want to see if you reserve that yes okay so yeah quickly i'll just list a couple of the top exports from indiana um and and well we are a big ag state with the corn and soybean uh exports uh also the top export would be medications uh various uh automobiles and automobile uh supply parts uh supply chain parts transmissions and so forth uh and uh gas powered trucks uh airplane engines uh and uh the rest really have to do with medical uh whether it's uh medical devices uh or automobile uh and and airplane parts and and engines and so forth so more uh a good a better mix of both agricultural and uh some very high tech particularly in the healthcare area okay okay fantastic so the first thing i would tell people to watch out for is do you want to engage b to b or b to g meaning um because there are times when the governments are the ones trying to put in some interventions and your potential customer for any of those things would be governments um but there are also times when it's another business a private sector on the other side that is trying to establish an industry and needs your equipment or your seeds and all of that so that's the first thing because a lot of times in the past people lean more heavily on the government but what's going on is that the future of africa people on b2b just like with china today a lot of the deals with china today maybe at the beginning it used to be government that could only afford but now you can actually just go straight to a private sector in china and do a business so that's the first foundational thing right um then let me just share a few examples maybe this will ring some bells so um thai seafoods right one in every three chicken is um you know put in the us is is from tyson food so former ceo donna smith we sat down and spoken at my event before some of the things he's doing he went to rwanda and he wanted to do a demonstration farm and the minister of agriculture said no that's not what we need what we found here is that we do not have enough um feed meal the feed for our livestock for those chicken is actually missing and what he did then was he built the first feed meal in rwanda now what's going on is since he built that feed mill two other investors have built two more because rwandans were insane we wanted charity they were saying we don't we can't find where to buy it right we cannot find the right feed meal to for our livestock so that's why i tell people listen to the aspirations looking listen to what those nations are trying to achieve and then insert your products so so soybean is huge definitely wheat we just yesterday i did a session with my network and we were talking about wheat which is huge you'll be amazed that the way you use wheat in the us is not the way some african countries make it they actually use it more like mashed potatoes and they eat it that way which is different um but i think you can't go wrong with agriculture whether it's poultry whether it's beef um i think finding the right strategy to insert it into an existing need so just like in business you have a solution you need to do a research in terms of who are my customers who are the potential clients is it a government is it a private sector and then how do we um structure is it a partnership are you looking for distributors are you looking for partners or you're just looking to sell out rightly all of those things is is what excites me because then we go from trade with africa and we narrow it down to actually trade transactions um so you can't go wrong with agriculture you talked about healthcare healthcare is huge um when it comes to um you know equipment technology um there's so much going on right now and even in the government they're trying to look at um you know affordable health care and all of those things that u.s already does like who's going to pay for care is it the employer is it the government those are things they are now trying to figure out because cost of health care is high everywhere but they are also trying to see how to implement that one thing i encourage people in a way think about the normal curve we're just at the very beginning and the people who insert themselves in the conversation today are the people that are going to be positioned to win because if you're in the room if you're showing up and you're part of the dialogue and you're showing up with your solutions your products then when it's time to buy and transact you'll be the first person they're thinking about wonderful toy and there there's a lot of positive feedback on a wonderful presentation and i'm gonna try to pack in three questions separate questions and then once again everyone uh feel free to email toyan directly and thank you again twain for all of this knowledge so the three i'm gonna put in for you is um penny asked which companies are leading with trade in africa the second one um that i thought you could touch on is what are the largest challenges still africa currently or in the near future and then rich giro um made an announcement that um joe biden was confirmed president i haven't been watching the news and he he a very active time right now for everyone and he said do you expect u.s africa ties will be strengthened under a president biden okay i think the last question is even the easiest one it's yes it's uh you know when you think about um the legacy of the obama administration when you think about um the relationship under under obama the relationship was strengthened uh with agua i don't know has anybody heard about agua okay let me quickly just explain this in 2000 the year 2000 president clinton and you know the us government established the african growth and opportunity act and what this is is an opportunity for products coming in from africa about five to six thousand products coming in from africa to be imported into the u.s market free of tarry free free of duty and without quota it was for it was for a length of time it expired president bush extended it and then it almost expired and then president obama extended it again to 2025. so looming right now is with the trump administration is oh we know for sure it's not going to be extended anymore so it's abiding administration for sure um africans would see that as a positive definitely as a positive um so so agua because a lot of times people talk about u.s exports and we feature we feature um you know opportunity in terms of exim bank the u.s exim bank we actually have um presentation materials from the headquarters they came in and they explained how exim bank drives trade with africa how they have pro um you know working capital um export financing ex you know export insurance all of those resources they explained it in detail and we have that content if anybody is interested so those are things um that i would say we are all looking at right now now the other question around what are the challenges i will talk about challenges from an aspect of trade and i'll also talk about challenges from a reputation so there's reputational challenges right that we all know about but from a trade standpoint the biggest challenge i would say is trade information lack of trade information is that market research is in that by lack of trade information and those are some of the things we are telling the government to look at digital from a digital disruption on making trade information accessible digitally right even in the era of kovid 19 um a lot of them weren't as prepared to go from you know meet me in my office you know a lot of for those that have operated in africa you have to be right there to touch they have to see you touch you before they would do anything with you but now that we're all having to operate virtually it's a big change management for the african nations so for them to be able for you to be able to pry their hands and say put that information online we need more information as investors are seeking where to invest as exporters are seeing where to um market to those information it's not readily available and but i know that african bank is also doing a lot of work in that aspect so for example yesterday during my um weekly with with those on my network you know one of the questions came from canada and they were like what was the top imports items in african countries i was like that's a good one i told him it's easier for you to actually do a research on top 10 imports into canada than it is to find into africa so those are some of the challenges we're seeing and then reputation when you think about instabilities political instabilities there's several um elections this is an election just like with u.s you know what's going on in the u.s right now we have that also ghana is going through an election year right now you have things going on popping up here and there and that people are monitoring and trying to manage that remains an issue um that has to be navigated and that's why i tell people uh make sure when you build a strategy don't build it around one nation you know diversify i think there was one one did i answer every yeah um the the last one and then we'll we'll have a few minutes we're at we're almost done we've done great with time if there's any leading country or leading companies that's trading with africa just to roll blocks with your head and then i'll let michael and larry close this out yes what i would say i like to use analogies a lot it's that a lot of people for centuries have been playing in the field on the continent but they've not been showing people the score right so they've been on the field coca-cola the procter gambles when you think about um let me just talk about cadbury cadbury is a 195 year old company but most people do not realize that africa produces 40 of the cocoa or cacao depending on how you call it the cacao in the world 40 of cocoa comes out of africa so a lot of global industries have actually emerged in the last you know based on commodity items coming from africa africa produces about 50 of the cashew in the world but you do not know because the cashew is exported out of africa into vietnam southeast asia process there before it comes into the u.s market so some of the work we're also trying to do we disrupt some of those supply chains because africans are now working on industrialization infrastructure development they're going to say oh that cocoa we now know what we want to do with it um the cashew we now want to roast it we're trying to industrialize as well so stay very close to afcfta it's going to be the most important trade policy i think in my generation and i'm super excited in terms of what it means for africa and the future of africa wow thank you toyan i i'm sure the audience would stay for hours and just listen and we could get all the questions but um i i know i appreciate it and so many great comments michael and larry do you have any final comments in the last two minutes of our presentation michael first thank you julian that was fascinating you know i think people are amazed at how the statistics are really uh emerging very quickly so on behalf of the nebraska world affairs council i want to thank you for really a fascinating helpful discussion and thanks for all the attendees for today for tuning in uh we'll post a video of today's event on our youtube channel in the next few days and i should mention that our next zoom world affairs presentation will be next month december 2nd and it's also going to be africa related the topic is rwanda a tale of one man's courage in the face of the genocide and it's a story from the person who was the only american who stayed behind during the genocide to help smuggle food and medicine into all the orphanages there during the genocide so for a full list of all of our events uh please look at our facebook site facebook slash nebraska world affairs and thanks again everyone we hope to see you at another one of our upcoming events and i'll just turn it over to larry and i'd like to echo michael in thanking uh everyone for an interesting conversation joy this was really fascinating having worked myself in africa quite a lot over the last 30 years i can really reinforce what you say about personal relationships being extremely important i would encourage people to do that and maybe take advantage of new technological opportunities to do it i would welcome uh you to provide us with contact information particularly as how we might lean on you to learn how to approach different markets in a particular way i think being representatives of american companies we obviously have to conform to the american uh foreign corrupt practices act that has traditionally created some challenges in working in africa and organizations like yours and others can help us navigate an appropriate way to do business to take advantage of the opportunities that are there so thank you for what you've done and look forward to a continuing conversation with you in the in the coming years ah thank you everyone yeah thank you so much and one way that i've actually started solving that is through the trade africa network it's actually digital and we have over 500 people in that network of learning growing supporting one another and then what we then do is we bring resources into that group so for example december 2 we're bringing the bank and the bank the reason i keep talking about african bank it's a multilateral that is owned by about 50 countries so engaging and seeing what they are doing with the government also tells you where each of the government is growing so thank you thank you so much laura michael everyone larry um such such an honor you know thank you thank you so much thank you thank you toyan and everybody is giving their praises in the in the corner and i put all of the contact contact information and she'd love to hear from you directly thank you yes thank you so much thank you you