The United States Department of State has announced that it sealed six new investment commitments worth more than $550 million with the Cote D’Ivoire government last week as it kicked off its new commercial diplomacy strategy in Africa.
Senior Bureau Official for the US Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs, Ambassador Troy Fitrell, disclosed this at a virtual press briefing with journalists on Tuesday.
According to him, President Donald Trump’s government is committed to walking the talk in its new investment diplomacy strategy in the region, a sharp shift from assistance and aid-led diplomacy.
He noted that the investment diplomacy strategy has attracted the U.S. 33 new deals worth $6 billion in the first hundred days of Trump’s administration.
“And I will say that just last week in Abidjan we ended up with, I think it was six—three MOUs signed with the host government as well as six new deals at more than $550 million. Also, just in the first hundred days of the administration, we’ve had 33 new deals worth more than $6 billion.
“This is a tremendous jump in economic activity between North America and Africa, and that matters,”;; he added.
DAILY POST reports that Ambassador Fitrell recently began a commercial diplomacy trip to West Africa. Meanwhile, Fitrell is yet to visit Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy as of the time of filing this report.
Recall that President Trump barely a week ago announced that the US secured a $2 trillion investment commitment during his Gulf trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
