act
Business Action for Africa catalyses business-to-business partnerships to drive on-the-ground action on business issues that matter for development, and development issues that matter for business.
We believe that by working together, businesses can achieve more – whether this means increasing the scale of their development impact, reducing the risk of a new business model, or strengthening their capacity to tackle a complex issue.
Governments, donors and civil society organisations are a vital part of businesses’ ability to deliver and vice versa.
Activities
North-South Corridor
Transport costs in Africa are prohibitively high. This has a direct, negative impact on Africa’s competitiveness; the ability of its producers and farmers to trade internationally and the ability to attract investments into the region.
To tackle this, the Secretariats of COMESA, EAC and SADC have set up a joint Task Force to harmonise infrastructure and trade programmes in East and Southern Africa. A key trading route – the North South Corridor has been identified as a pilot programme – which, with reduced transport and transit costs, would transform trading opportunities from the copper-belt of southern DR Congo and northern Zambia to the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to the north-east, and to the South African ports in the south.
Business Action for Africa has been actively supporting business engagement with this initiative, including through a business roundtable in London and support for a major event in Zambia in 2009.