Busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T com­pa­nies in the African di­as­po­ra will be ex­plored when the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee (ESC) hosts the 11th An­nu­al Trans-At­lantic Trade and In­vest­ment Sym­po­sium at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on to­mor­row. The Unit­ed Na­tions has de­clared 2011the In­ter­na­tion­al Year of Peo­ple African De­scent. Fea­ture pre­sen­ter, Michael Su­dark­asa, will pro­vide par­tic­i­pants in­ter­est­ed in pur­su­ing African op­por­tu­ni­ties with in­sights in­to a range of ar­eas of growth and op­por­tu­ni­ty on the con­ti­nent and in­di­cate the best ways to make use of these op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Su­dark­asa, a Unit­ed States-trained at­tor­ney/con­sul­tant based in Jo­han­nes­burg, South Africa. Su­dark­asa, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Africa Busi­ness Group, is the au­thor of The African Busi­ness Hand­book. He is an ex­port pro­mo­tion and in­vest­ment at­trac­tion spe­cial­ist with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 22 years of ex­pe­ri­ence. In a state­ment, Kam­bon said the pan­el of speak­ers was spe­cial­ly se­lect­ed be­cause of their in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the African econ­o­my. For ex­am­ple, Mike Hammah, Ghana's Min­is­ter of Trans­port, will lead a del­e­ga­tion that will in­clude Ghana Port and Har­bour Au­thor­i­ty. He's ex­pect­ed to speak about the ship­ment of goods from the West­ern Hemi­sphere to Africa. Kwame N Ac­quah, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­search De­vel­op­ment and Fi­nan­cial Con­sul­tants (RD­FC) Ltd, will ad­vise on forg­ing busi­ness re­la­tions with Africa.

RD­FC, a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket en­try sup­port ser­vices con­sul­tan­cy for the oil and gas in­dus­try, of­fers sup­port to com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing in Nige­ria, Ghana and the rest of the coun­tries in the West African sub-re­gion. In 1993, Ac­quah com­plet­ed his un­der­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Unit­ed King­dom's Uni­ver­si­ty of Buck­ing­ham, grad­u­at­ing with a de­gree in busi­ness stud­ies, with a ma­jor in mar­ket­ing. In 1995, he earned a Mas­ter of Arts in mar­ket­ing man­age­ment in 1995 from Mid­dle­sex Uni­ver­si­ty. The ESC said the Trade and In­vest­ment Sym­po­sium comes on the heels of the En­er­gy Cham­ber in April go­ing on a two-week en­er­gy ser­vices trade mis­sion to Nige­ria and Ghana.

The ESC cit­ed the En­er­gy Cham­ber's Web site, which stat­ed that, "with the cur­rent eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty plagu­ing the world, there is a great need for coun­tries to seek in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets for their goods and ser­vices, mar­kets that are con­sid­ered to be un­tapped." Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver, chief ex­ec­u­tive of the En­er­gy Cham­ber, who led the mis­sion to Nige­ria and Ghana, will be giv­ing in­sights in­to suc­cess­es, chal­lenges and the fu­ture plans the cham­ber has for in­vest­ment in Africa. The ESC said there will be speak­ers and busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives from T&T, the Caribbean, the Unit­ed States and Africa on "op­por­tu­ni­ties to form mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial links." "This ini­tia­tive has con­ti­nu­ity and eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty. The African con­ti­nent is the world's sec­ond most pop­u­lous con­ti­nent. With more than a bil­lion peo­ple, there is cer­tain­ly tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­crete busi­ness de­vel­op­ment," Kam­bon said in the state­ment. Reg­is­tra­tion is US$150 per per­son.

For in­for­ma­tion, call 633-9236 or e-mail: transat­net.esc@gmail.com.