Michelle Loubon

Vis­it­ing South Africa-busi­ness­man Michael Su­dark­asa said yes­ter­day that US$8 bil­lion raised by glob­al pri­vate in­vestors is be­ing in­vest­ed in Africa to de­vel­op agro-busi­ness­es. Su­dark­asa, who heads the Africa Busi­ness Group, lament­ed about four bil­lion peo­ple around the world live on less than US$2.50 a day. Su­dark­asa made these com­ments while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the 11th An­nu­al Trans-At­lantic Trade and In­vest­ment Sym­po­sium, at Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's, on Fri­day. It was host­ed in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. The theme was "Rein­vent­ing The Tri­an­gle XI with spe­cif­ic em­pha­sis on Africa, The New Busi­ness Fron­tier, Part­ner­ing For Suc­cess."

It formed part of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee T&T 2011 Cel­e­bra­tions. Among those present were Tra­cy Wil­son, Di­rec­tor of Ed­u­ca­tion, Chair­man Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of T&T Khafra Kam­bon and Wayne Punette Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. Su­dark­asa said: "70 per cent of all the coun­tries have some re­serves. The lead­ing coun­tries are in West Africa and North Africa. It is termed the "Gulf of Africa" be­cause it takes you around to An­go­la (a ma­jor oil pro­duc­ing African na­tion). In the last few years, they have found oil in East Africa." Su­dark­asa added: "Eu­rope, Asia and the Mid­dle East are in­vest­ing in Africa for their own agri­cul­tur­al food se­cu­ri­ty. They are sup­port­ing farm­ing ini­tia­tives so it would ad­dress their own food se­cu­ri­ty needs. Among them are coun­tries like Chi­na, Rus­sia, UK and In­dia. They have re­alised there is greater prof­itabil­i­ty to be de­rived from agri­cul­ture." Kam­bon: 'Africa cen­tral to world econ­o­my' Kam­bon re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing Africa has al­ways been cen­tral of the world econ­o­my for hun­dreds of years.

And he re­mind­ed them about the heinous slave trade. He said: "It wasn't ura­ni­um or man­ganese. It was African peo­ple. The plun­der of peo­ple that built pros­per­ous coun­tries. Haiti was once the jew­el of the French em­pire. A lot of the skills were agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment." Among the slew of speak­ers on the theme Op­por­tu­ni­ties Re­lat­ed to Africa's Grow­ing En­er­gy Sec­tor were Richard Anamoo, Di­rec­tor of Tema Port/Ghana who spoke on Mar­itime De­vel­op­ment and the Ex­pan­sion of In­vest­ment Op­por­tu­ni­ties in a New En­er­gy Pro­duc­er. Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver/CEO En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T shared lessons from the African ini­tia­tives and Kwame Ac­quah/Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor RD­FC, Ghana of­fered a Guide to Suc­cess­ful In­vest­ment in West Africa's Oil and Gas Sec­tor.