Vera Daves de Sousa, who was one of the speakers at the plenary meeting on "The Future of the US-Africa Partnership", said that the Lobito Corridor project, a strategic railway infrastructure that connects the Port of Lobito in Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to facilitate the flow of minerals and goods, "demonstrates that it is possible to build successful partnerships, anchored in private investment".
According to Vera Daves de Sousa, this mechanism has several advantages, one of which is that it does not put "additional pressure on economies, some of which already have a level of debt that requires care and attention", while at the same time addressing the lack of infrastructure that exists and "cannot be ignored".
The Finance Minister stressed that the African continent "has a pressing infrastructure gap, but also has levels, in some cases high, in others considerable, of debt".
Vera Daves de Sousa argued that solutions involving partnerships with private entities, financing for these entities and identifying good projects, and being able to "demonstrate that the project will pay for itself, are undoubtedly the way forward".
The Finance Minister stressed that we must not have a narrow-minded view, looking "purely [at] the export or movement of critical minerals", but rather a perspective of added value, with medium and long-term partnerships, local content, in the particular case of Angola, the creation of jobs, the emergence of other business opportunities in the areas of tourism, agribusiness, light industry and others.
"The starting point must be to recalibrate partnerships with a view to motivating effective investment and together we must pave the way for the realization of this investment", she stressed.
The governor stressed that partnerships have been heavily anchored in either a donation mechanism or a state financing mechanism, so the parties need to "go beyond that".
"It's not that we're going to give up on these two variables, but rather make partnerships richer and focus on the broader spectrum of collaboration, looking at large companies, but also at medium and small companies", she said.
Vera Daves argued that it is also necessary to look at other sectors, in addition to the usual energy sector, and to focus on initiatives that are intensive in generating jobs.
"Thinking a little outside the box is hard work, it forces us to do things differently, it forces us to study markets that we are not used to, the issue of language also arises, but we have to find ways to address all of this and establish partnerships that are beneficial within the continent and beyond", she noted.
The 17th US-Africa Business Summit ended this Wednesday, after three intense days of contacts, and was attended by more than 1500 delegates, including heads of state, heads of government, representatives of 490 Angolan companies, 202 African companies and 73 North American companies, with nine legal instruments being signed, in various sectors.
