NIGERIA 'Africa is open for business' -Nigerian MP
Posted Mon, 17 Jul 2006
Abuja - A summit backed by a United States foundation to discuss investment and the growth of the private sector in Africa has opened in the Nigerian capital to 500 delegates.
"The opportunities are there for you to tap ... a new era is dawning in Africa," Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in her opening remarks to the seventh Leon H. Sullivan summit in Abuja.
"Africa is open for business. I invite you to invest," she said, adding that the continent was blessed with vast business and economic potential waiting to be tapped by local and foreign investors.
She urged participants to deliberate on the summit theme of "Financing and Investing in Africa's Private Sector", stressing that now was the time for Africa to take advantage of global investment opportunities to propel its growth and development.
Twelve leaders from Africa and the Caribbean, including Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo and those of Liberia, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, São Tomé and Príncipe, Tanzania, Sierra Leone and Gambia would attend, they said.
The prime ministers of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were also expected to attend, along with former US president Bill Clinton and World Bank director general Paul Wolfowitz.
The summit, "Africa: a continent of opportunities - building partnerships for success", as sponsored by Anglo-Dutch Shell, North American Airlines, CocaCola, General Motors, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Daimler Chrysler and a number of local Nigerian banks.
The Leon H. Sullivan summit brings together world political and business leaders, delegates representing national and international civil and multilateral organisations, members of the academic institutions to focus attention and resources on Africa's economic and social development.
The Abuja summit aims to marshal resources to expand the private sector, build more economic infrastructure and transfer technologies to African nations.
Leon H. Sullivan, an African American who worked on the international humanitarian stage and was ordained a Baptist minister at the age of 18, died in 2001.
He devoted his life to the economic, political and social development of the poor and the disadvantaged in America and Africa by supporting programmes and initiatives that serve to reduce poverty and unemployment.
Previous summits were held in Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Nigeria.
US President George W. Bush and ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor, Condoleezza Rice, attended the last summit held in Abuja in July 2003. Sapa-AFP
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