(1) It is in the interest of the United States to 
ensure that bilateral economic ties with Africa are 
strong, robust, and diverse, in part because African 
countries possess— 
(A) great pent-up consumer demand and 
untapped human and natural resources, and 
many are now considered ‘‘next frontier’’ econo-
mies; 
(B) some of the world’s fastest growing 
economies, with a collective Gross Domestic 
Product of $1,600,000,000,000 that is pro-
jected to double in the next 10 years; 
(C) combined consumer spending power of 
almost 
$900,000,000,000, 
with 
$1,400,000,000,000 
in 
projected 
spending 
power in the next 10 years; 
(D) a 60-percent share of the world’s total 
amount of uncultivated, arable land; and 
(E) a significant percentage of the world’s 
strategic minerals and energy resources. 
(2) Africa represents a potentially profitable 
destination for United States investors. According to 
a United Nations Conference on Trade and Develop-
ment study, return on investment in African compa-
nies has averaged nearly 30 percent annually over 
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the past several years. Profitability and rates of 
growth among many African firms have exceeded 
global averages, often by large proportions. As a re-
sult, 34 private investment funds are now active in 
Africa in diverse productive sectors. A recent Global 
Competitiveness Report showed that several of Afri-
ca’s largest economies receive high grades for inno-
vation and business sophistication. 
(3) Long-term United States economic security 
interests will be better secured by ensuring United 
States access to Africa’s vast natural and human re-
sources, for which rapidly rising global demand has 
created increasing competition between industri-
alized countries and emerging market countries, 
such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and others, 
with respect to their efforts to exert political and 
economic influence in and increase their economic 
cooperation and trade with African countries. Such 
ties are growing apace; for example, the estimated 
value of Chinese imports from Africa rose by over 
693 percent between 2000 and 2009, while the value 
of its exports to the region increased by 926 percent 
during the same period, in comparison to a rise in 
United States imports from the region of just under 
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200 percent and a rise in United States exports to 
the region of 21 percent during the same period. 
(4) The United States should continue to sup-
port efforts to foster socioeconomic development and 
economic growth in Africa, including by— 
(A) pursuing efforts to increase collabora-
tion among United States Government depart-
ments and agencies in order to more closely in-
tegrate and coordinate United States programs 
and policies aimed at promoting trade and in-
vestment with Africa with those intended to ad-
vance socioeconomic development and oppor-
tunity in Africa; 
(B) fostering United States private, public- 
private partnership, and other investments in 
Africa, as well as other bilateral economic, tech-
nical, and social and cultural ties and ex-
changes, both at the official level and between 
citizens, private sector businesses, and civil soci-
ety organizations; 
(C) supporting and fostering citizen-led ef-
forts to form business, technical, academic, and 
sociocultural ties with Africans by working to 
promote the activities of citizen groups that 
seek to advance such goals among other persons 
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or organizations engaged in socioeconomic de-
velopment, business, and charitable activities in-
tended to bolster bonds between the United 
States and Africa; and 
(D) supporting the efforts of United States 
persons and groups with interests and ties to 
Africa to foster and advance such ties and, in 
particular, the interests and efforts, with re-
spect to such objectives, of members of the Af-
rican Diaspora in the United States, in recogni-
tion, among other reasons, of— 
(i) the longstanding and deep immi-
gration ties between Africa and the United 
States, including with respect to involun-
tary and other migrations of Africans to 
the Americas in the 19th and earlier cen-
turies, and to more recent migrations of 
Africans to the United States; 
(ii) efforts by the African Union to 
foster economic, technical, educational, and 
social ties between its member states and 
the global African Diaspora; 
(iii) the status of the African-Amer-
ican and broader African Diaspora commu-
nity in the United States as a large con-
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sumer and producer market and a poten-
tially significant United States counterpart 
segment for trade and investment related 
to Africa, in particular with respect to 
commerce in Afrocentric goods and serv-
ices and by small- and medium-sized enter-
prises; and 
(iv) the status of recent African immi-
grants as a growing, often economically 
well-off 
professional 
and 
educational 
human resource and a community with di-
verse ties to both American and African 
societies that is well placed to foster closer, 
mutually beneficial economic, intellectual, 
and cultural ties between the United 
States and African countries, including 
with respect to helping to reverse the so- 
called ‘‘brain drain’’ or emigration of 
skilled, educated persons from Africa, par-
ticularly in the science and technology, 
education, and health sectors—a phe-
nomenon that threatens to imperil African 
productivity, economic growth, and global 
competitiveness necessary to improve devel-
opment and human welfare in Africa and 
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