EAFAC: New US – Based Company Plans to Invest in Eastern Africa Region

By Mekki Center February 19, 2017

A newly established US-based Company has trained it’s focus on the Eastern Africa Region as its prime investment destination with long term plans to expand to the rest of Africa.

East Africa Assistance Corporation (EAFAC) is working on several investment programs to link Africa with US market and businesses. EAFAC will initially focus on the larger Eastern Africa Region comprising 13 countries, namely Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Somalia, Seychelles, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

The firm is interested in transport, agriculture, oil and the general mining, organic food and green energy. EAFAC is setting plans to implement projects and to create more opportunities for US investors to get connected with serious and powerful partners in Africa.

EAFAC President John Shoreman said the firm has a broad vision, which views development projects as key catalyst in the battle by Africa and other Third World regions against injustice and retardation.

“We give priority to right to development, right to environment, and cultural rights in a region needs investment to be established on the best standards”, said Shoreman in an interview.

The East Africa comprises two major economic and economic blocs which offer great investment promise. These are the Inter- Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eight-country trade bloc in Africa, which includes governments from the Horn of Africa, Nile Valley, and the African Great Lakes with its headquarters are in Djibouti City, and the East Africa Community(EAC), a regional intergovernmental organization of six Partner States, comprising Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.

There are also several major governmental and private sector umbrella bodies in the region which offer opportunities for partnership for investors.

According to EAC data, the United States had US $2.0 billion in total (two way) goods trade with the Eastern African Community (EAC) during 2015. Exports totaled $1.2 billion while imports totaled $788 million; The U.S. goods trade surplus with the EAC was $429 million in 2015.

According to the Department of Commerce, US exports of goods to EAC supported an estimated 10 thousand jobs in 2014.

In an article published on January 31, 2017 Dr. Uchenna Ekwo, the President of New York-based Center for Media & Peace Initiatives argued that “President Donald Trump’s self-professed unpredictability may change Washington’s decades-long bossy approach to what could be described as second and third tier countries in relation to sanctions and other perceived atrocities.”

Dr. Ekwo argued that Africa was the one region that “Trump’s tsunami of change is sorely needed ..even though his presidential campaign remained mute on a coherent Africa policy.”

Uganda Amb to the US Oliver Wonekha in an article title, “U.S. is discovering that Africa is open for business”, wrote:

“U.S. trade to and from Africa has tripled over the past decade with the U.S. exporting $22.6 billion in goods and services to the region last year. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that economic growth rate in sub-Saharan Africa was 6.1 percent last year”.

The envoy noted that in the five countries of the East African Community (Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania), total trade (exports plus imports) grew by nearly 80 percent between 2012 and 2014: from about $1.54 billion to $2.75 billion. U.S. exports to East African Community countries more than doubled in that period while U.S. imports from the community grew by about 30 percent.

These views are part of the growing perspectives about the huge potential that Africa holds and which many US based companies, including the newly established firm, EAFAC, will increasingly be eying.

The challenge is for the African governments and entrepreneurs to create enabling environments and frameworks for partnership with the US based companies to unlock the continent’s potential to create quick economic growth.