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Updated November 17, 2020
The Trump Administration's Prosper Africa Initiative
The Trump Administration's Prosper Africa initiative aims
to substantially increase U.S.-African trade and investment
ties, spur joint U.S. and African economic growth, and as
U.S. officials have stated-demonstrate the superior value
proposition of transparent markets and private enterprise.
Past Administrations have similarly sought to expand U.S.-
Africa trade and investment ties, but gains to date have
been modest. In 2019, Africa accounted for 1.4% of U.S.
global trade and received 0.7% of U.S. foreign direct
investment. Such shares have declined relative to their
historical highs a decade or so ago, suggesting that quickly
achieving sizable growth in such metrics may not be easy.
As such, Congress may seek to determine whether Prosper
Africa is adequately funded, effectively configured, and an
appropriate vehicle to attain such goals. (See Figure 1 for
recent U.S.-Africa trade trends.)
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Then-National Security Advisor John Bolton announced
Prosper Africa in a late 2018 speech unveiling the
Administration's Africa strategy. The initiative, he said,
would foster U.S. investment, expand Africa's middle class,
and enhance business climates across the region. He also
said it would help to counter predatory financial and
political efforts by Russia and China in Africa; encourage
African leaders to choose high-quality, transparent,
inclusive and sustainable U.S. and other foreign
investment projects; and expand African access to business
finance. U.S. officials formally launched Prosper Africa in
2019 at the U.S. Corporate Council on Africa's U.S.-Africa
Business Summit in Mozambique.
The State Department's FY2021 budget request states that
Prosper Africa aims to unleash U.S. unmatched
competitive advantages to vastly accelerate U.S-Africa
trade and investment, including by creating a pipeline of
U.S.-Africa trade and investment opportunities for U.S.
firms active in the region. It seeks to do so, in part, by
helping to facilitate business transactions and blended-
finance solutions to de-risk investment opportunities, and
by supporting business-facilitating regulatory and policy
reforms and environments in Africa, the request states. It
also promotes African exports to the United States under
the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA Title I,
P.L. 106-200, as amended, a trade preference program).
Through such efforts, the initiative seeks to help transform
U.S.-Africa relations from an aid-based focus to [a] true
trade partnership (as the FY2020 budget request stated) -a
goal shared by several past Administrations.
The FY2021 foreign aid budget request seeks $75 million
for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
implementation of Prosper Africa, which was funded with
$50 million in FY2020 and $50 million in FY2019. Further
separate funding also is planned (see below).
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Prosper Africa is not a new foreign aid program. Rather, its
goal is to harmonize and mobilize the existing programs,
resources, and capabilities of 17 U.S. agencies and
departments in a cohesive, coordinated manner to achieve
the initiative's goals. In addition to USAID, it includes the
U.S. International Development Finance Corporation
(DFC), and U.S. trade promotion agencies: the Export-
Import Bank (EXIM), the Trade and Development Agency
(TDA), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Other participating agencies include the Office of the U.S.
Trade Representative (USTR), the Millennium Challenge
Corporation (MCC), the U.S. African Development
Foundation (USADF), and the Departments of Agriculture,
Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Labor, State,
Transportation, and the Treasury.
Figure I. U.S. Trade with Africa ($ in billions)
Exports imports
3312
sesle Sxse
$108 100\ \ \\ I
2014 2Q15 2016 2017 2018 2oi9
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
A Prosper Africa Executive Chairman, currently the head of
the DFC, provides strategic guidance for the initiative. Day
to day implementation and coordination are led by a Chief
Operating Officer from USAID, aided by a USAID-based
interagency initiative secretariat and input from a Policy
Coordination Committee. This work is guided by a
nonpublic National Security Council-coordinated strategy
and a separate inter-agency implementation plan setting out
initiative goals and assessment metrics.
At the country level, each U.S. embassy in Africa maintains
a Prosper Africa Deal Team drawn from existing mission
staff. These teams aim to link U.S. firms to trade and
investment opportunities in Africa, enable African firms to
access similar prospects in the United States, and facilitate
private sector access to U.S. trade assistance, financing,
insurance, and related services. The secretariat and other
Washington, DC-based staff support the teams in Africa, as
well as efforts to expand U.S. business interest in African
markets. USAID's trade hubs in Southern and West Africa
(see textbox below) help implement the initiative, and a
similar hub in North Africa is planned. In place of a similar
former hub in East Africa, US AID plans to support a
Prosper Africa Private Sector Engagement project
centered on increasing two-way U.S.-Africa investment,
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