Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Trade and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Part Two Forging Cultural Connections: America in Africa
- Part Three Forging Cultural Connections: Africa in America
- Part Four U.S. Political and Economic Interests in West Africa
- 13 The United States and West Africa: The Institutionalization of Foreign Relations in an Age of Ideological Ferment
- 14 U.S. Foreign Policy toward West Africa: Democracy, Economic Development, and Security
- 15 U.S. Economic Assistance to West Africa
- 16 The West African Enterprise Network: Business Globalists, Interregional Trade, and U.S. Interventions
- 17 Poverty Alleviation in Sierra Leone and the Role of U.S. Foreign Aid: An Institutional Trap Analysis
- 18 Post–Cold War U.S. Foreign Policy toward Liberia and Sierra Leone
- Part Five Looking toward the Future: U.S.–West African Linkages in the Twenty-first Century
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
16 - The West African Enterprise Network: Business Globalists, Interregional Trade, and U.S. Interventions
from Part Four - U.S. Political and Economic Interests in West Africa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Trade and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Part Two Forging Cultural Connections: America in Africa
- Part Three Forging Cultural Connections: Africa in America
- Part Four U.S. Political and Economic Interests in West Africa
- 13 The United States and West Africa: The Institutionalization of Foreign Relations in an Age of Ideological Ferment
- 14 U.S. Foreign Policy toward West Africa: Democracy, Economic Development, and Security
- 15 U.S. Economic Assistance to West Africa
- 16 The West African Enterprise Network: Business Globalists, Interregional Trade, and U.S. Interventions
- 17 Poverty Alleviation in Sierra Leone and the Role of U.S. Foreign Aid: An Institutional Trap Analysis
- 18 Post–Cold War U.S. Foreign Policy toward Liberia and Sierra Leone
- Part Five Looking toward the Future: U.S.–West African Linkages in the Twenty-first Century
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Summary
Introduction
This chapter discusses the “new generation” of African entrepreneurs who were organized into the West African Enterprise Network (WAEN) between 1993 and 2003, as a result of a project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors. The aim was to “strengthen private sector capacity to pursue regional and international business opportunities and to develop and implement a reform agenda targeting trade and investment.” There was not an absence of trade between the United States and various African countries before this intervention, but some of the changes that this intervention accomplished (for example, enhancing interregional communication and changing cumbersome trade regulations) were helpful to the participant network members themselves and to subsequent trade and interaction between West African countries and the United States. The changes also helped regional trade.
Unlike small-scale informal-sector vendors and other large formal-sector African businesses, WAEN members were and continue to be business globalists. WAEN at its height included thirteen West African country networks. (Two other regional enterprise networks, in East and southern Africa, and a Pan-African network also were formed between 1998 and 2003.) This chapter discusses the collection of data from a sample of male and female network members in Ghana, Mali, and Senegal (interviews were also carried out with members from ten additional African countries in East and southern Africa).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The United States and West AfricaInteractions and Relations, pp. 305 - 324Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008