Southern Africa Global Competitiveness Hub: Exporting Goods

What is this Hub? What is this all about? In October of 2001, President Bush at the AGOA Forum announced that the United States was going to open trade centers to encourage Africans, that is all of Africa, to export goods all over the world. We call these the Competitiveness Hubs and they are in Botswana, where we are going to unveil the plaque today, they are in Ghana and they are in Kenya. And these three Competitiveness Hubs try to, and hopefully will succeed, in getting all of sub-Saharan Africa to prepare their goods and services for the markets all over the world -- Europe, Intra-Africa, North America, and the Far East. This is about getting African business services ready to compete around the world.

And you know our belief is, and I believe the Europeans share this belief, African goods and products can be competitive. They can compete and, given the chance, I think they will compete very effectively. So what does this Hub do? What are we going to try and accomplish? You know we are going to, number one, explain the rules. Trade has rules, the rules to the game. And one of the things that we are going to do is explain the rules to export to the United States. We are going to explain the rules -- how to export to Europe, and how do you export to the Koreans or to Japan. So we are going to explain how this gets done. We are also going to do export promotion. Working with African entrepreneurs, figuring out what are the best systems, what are the best products. So export promotion is going to be key. Business linkages. That is a how an African exporter or entrepreneur can team up with a European or an American or a Taiwanese entrepreneur. So business linkages are key. Trade requires that kind of linkage system between exporter, importer, and financier and those that are the producers. So those linkages are the key and we're going to work very hard at helping people find each other. We are going to get technical and we're going to look at specific tariff and non-tariff barriers. We are going to look at things like sanitary issues, get down in the weeds. We are going to get down in the nitty gritty and we are going to, hopefully going to, assist Africans to improve their products and get them ready for the markets that are competitive, but we feel African goods can do very well.

Those are the goals. And what we are here today to do is simply launch this great project. We have the champions as we call them. These are the business people, the men and women who have already taken advantage of this thing called the global market and they are already doing it and we praise you and we take our hats off to you and we want to broaden what you already do, but we want to include others too. So, we will get out of your hair so that you can get on with your very important symposium which kicks this day off and we are grateful that you are here. So Mr. Ministers, if you are ready, we can officially open this Hub and unveil the plaque. Thank you.