Mpumalanga business mogul Robert Gumede addresses heads of state in America

During the three-day summit that commenced at the South African Chamber of Commerce to the USA Chair on December 13, Robert Gumede offered a prognosis on practical, mutually beneficial pathways forward in the multilateral relationships that form the dynamic between the United States and the world’s largest collective marketplace.

The summit drew leaders from 49 African states and various African Union representatives to the United States.
Gumede surmised that the first head of state gathering of African leaders by a US president since 2014 would be addressing a shared commitment to trade and investment in the face of lingering supply chain crises, to innovation and digital transformation, global health and resilience against highly exportable threats, and climate commitments.

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Gumede said, “By 2050, a quarter of all humans will be African. We already host the largest youth demographic to date and that demographic is acutely aware of the challenges, but more so the opportunities to partner with capable Americans; however, they wish to do so on terms that are agreeable for all.
“This [the South African youth] is a generation with no recollection of the throes of apartheid.

They recognise their rights, their entitlements as a resource-rich continent, and in Africa as a collective opportunity – a marketplace for investment in localised industrialisation and infrastructure and human capital development, as examples.
“Historically, partnerships were not ‘B2B’, but fostered by governments, which means bureaucracy, which means delays.

African entrepreneurs like myself are versatile and are looking for 2023-era technical partners from America to offer next-generation services and products at home and to create them from home with an eye on high skills training and quelling the brain drain drawing away our brightest and best.”

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The US-Africa Leaders Summit 2022 took place while African nations seek to take advantage of boons borne of the new African Continental Free Trade Area domestically, an agreement uniting 54 nations into the world’s largest trade bloc, set to grow Africa’s GDP by $450b.
“America has an opportunity to reset its relationship with Africa. Unlike our relationship with China, which largely operates through government-to-government investments, we can forge partnerships with African entrepreneurs and businesses.

This can create a win-win scenario, especially since African entrepreneurs have domain knowledge, can create certainty, can protect investments, can create sustainable jobs in sectors at the forefront of growth, such as manufacturing and agribusiness. Together we can create new markets for products and services,” Gumede continued.

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“To date, America’s banks are not in Africa, and they should be. New world order minerals for battery storage and vehicles, those needed to fuel the green industrial revolution visibly under way all around us, are in abundance in Africa; the DRC and Zambia alone host more than 70% of the world’s deposits of untapped copper and cobalt.

If Americans still see Africa in the eyes of its former colonialists and corrupt political leaders, it will once again miss business opportunities to partner with Africa; they will lose out to the intrepid from China, Russia, Iran and Turkey in the geopolitical game of chess we all quietly play,” Gumede said.