Washington, DC — The U.S. Africa Business Summit scheduled to start next week in Philadelphia has been posponed until October 30, according to Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) President Stephen Hayes. "All people will be focused on national mourning, as they should be," said Hayes, "and not on investment in Africa."
Among those who died in Tuesday's jetliner attacks in New York and Washington was the son-in-law of of Corporate Council on Africa Board Chairman Maurice Tempelsman.
With airline travel restricted, Hayes said the Council has already begun receiving calls from delegates from African countries saying they cannot get on airlines or are having difficulty making connections. "So our decision is one of practicality as well as sentiment."
African nations have reacted with sympathy and outrage over the attacks. In Tanzania and Kenya where U.S. embassies were bombed by terrorists in 1998 security has been heightened. Many observers and analysts think the risk of doing business overseas is going up, but few believe that U.S. businesses in Africa face special danger after Tuesday's tragedy. "I don't think it has any more implications for Africa than for any other part of the world," said James L. Woods, Senior Vice President of Cohen and Woods, a CCA member company. From 1960 to 1994, Woods served with the office of the Secretary of Defense. His duties were primarily concerned with international security.
More than likely, a small group seeking symbolic targets in the U.S. organized Tuesday's bombing, Woods thinks. In his view, hitting businesses -- even U.S. businesses in Africa, isn't their goal. Woods also noted that Libya seems to have "disengaged" from terrorism, and Sudan may also have pulled back from support for such actions, although Woods said it's "still too early to tell."
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J. Stephen Morrison, Africa Program Director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, thinks that U.S. business in Africa won't be much affected, although postponement of the CCA summit, which was to be followed October 3 by a U.S.-sub-Saharan African Trade and Cooperation forum focused on the African Growth and Opportunity Act, may be a "setback" for Bush administration efforts to push that program. "Some 1,400 people, including [numerous] heads of state, were going to attend [the CCA summit]. It will be difficult to get the same group of people together again".
Most U.S. business investment in Africa is in the energy sector, says Morrison. "Oil and gas. Those guys are pretty hard headed."
However, the attacks "immediately call attention to all states that are and have been on the terrorist list, and Sudan will get another look." This new pressure on Khartoum "could help or hinder" former Senator John C. Danforth, who has just been appointed special envoy to Sudan. Its government "may be more receptive" to peace proposals, Morrison says, or the impetus could move in the opposite direction, because of popular pressure or other factors.
For sure, Morrison thinks, administration interest in radical Islam in Africa will intensify, especially in Nigeria and South Africa. Cape Town has been rocked in recent years by Islamic protests. Adds Woods in a similar vein, "The cultural-religious clash along Africa's religious fault line is likely to get worse."
