Brookings Institution's Susan Rice will discuss capital investment in Africa

Susan E. Rice, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a proponent of free trade between the United States and Africa, will discuss capital investment in African nations Thursday, Oct. 23, at 4:30 p.m. in the David L. Call Auditorium of Kennedy Hall at Cornell. Her talk, "Increasing Capital Flows to Africa," is free and open to the public. It will be the keynote address at the 2003 Emerging Market Program symposium, a program of Cornell's Department of Applied Economics and Management.

Prior to joining the Brookings Institution, Rice worked in the U.S. State Department as assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1997 to 2001. She formulated and implemented U.S. policy for relations with 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including political, economic, security and humanitarian issues. From 1995 to 1997 Rice also served as special assistant to President Clinton and as senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council. At Brookings, she examines the national security implications of global poverty, inequality, transnational security threats and new strategies for corporate social-responsibility investing.

Africa, Rice points out, is a vital region of the world, with more than 800 million people and vast natural resources. Crises, conflicts and chronic poverty frequently overshadow the region's opportunities and accomplishments, and these problems make capital investment very difficult for U.S. and western interests, she says.

Rice says that more than 100,000 American jobs are tied to sub-Saharan Africa, which buys at least $6 billion of American products annually. Africa supplies more than 16 percent of U.S. crude oil imports, and African countries account for nearly half of the world's production of bauxite, chrome and diamonds, more than half of its cocoa and platinum and nearly 75 percent of its cobalt.

Rice supports an extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act for 10 years beyond its 2008 expiration. The United States, she believes, should seek to complete a free trade agreement with Africa in a decade.

If Africa is to achieve the sustained economic growth needed to alleviate poverty and establish political stability, Rice says, its nations must have investment capital. There is, she states, a correlation between foreign direct investment flows and economic growth, especially when there is an educated work force and hospitable conditions for investment.

Cornell's Emerging Markets Program was founded by Ralph D. Christy, a Cornell professor of applied economics and management, to create a stage for academics, scholars and leading practitioners that encourages discussions and bridges the exchange of information and knowledge of emerging market economies.