Secretary Pritzker Discusses PAGE in Ghana During African Trade Mission (Radio Interview)

While in Ghana on an Energy Business Development Mission, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker spoke to Sammy Darko of BBC Africa about how the President’s Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship initiative will focus on increasing access to capital, access to opportunity, and access to a skilled workforce to help entrepreneurs all over the world. The transcript of the radio interview is below.

Anchor: BCC tonight in Focus. First, the latest world news. We stay in Ghana because the US government has led a delegation of twenty top business people to explore investment and export opportunities across West Africa. The U.S. is looking to increase trade links in Africa, particularly in the energy sector, where it is looking to spend more than $7 billion. In the Ghanaian capital, Sammy Darko, our reporter, asked Penny Pritzker, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who she brought along.

Secretary Pritzker: Well, a month ago, President Obama announced the President’s Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship. It’s a group of eleven American entrepreneurs, household names who have started businesses across the United States, five women, six men – and I get the pleasure of chairing this group – and our goal is to bring both to the United States as well as around the world our entrepreneurs to share their learnings, to inspire, to hear what are the obstacles that are being faced by entrepreneurs, and to try and assist them through the stories and connections that can be made through our entrepreneurs.

Sammy Darko: Well, we knew some of the challenges facing our top premiers in Africa, and in Ghana in particular, has to do with access to market and access to credit. What is the program specifically going to do to address some of these challenges?

Secretary Pritzker: Well, the entrepreneurs have decided to focus on three areas, and we’re brand new, so we’re just putting our business plan together, but our focus is going to be on access to capital, access to opportunity, and access to a skilled workforce, and so we’re going to focus on potentially creating new avenues for capital for entrepreneurs. We’re going to focus on bringing connections and networking and opportunity for entrepreneurs to either get press, or to meet the kind of leaders that they need to meet in order to get their products to market. For example, we just met a company here who needed greater access to eBay and PayPal – this is something that we can help with.

Sammy Darko: We’ve heard the Chinese invest a lot in Africa – they are increasing their presence. Is the U.S. trying to play catch up?

Secretary Pritzker: The United States, first of all, we’re not playing catch up, we are here, and the United States has been here. And the fact that I am here with twenty American businesses focused on helping African countries, like Ghana, like Nigeria, address their power issues, making sure that African countries can grow their power generation and their power availability and consistency, which we all know is a foundation for economic growth. And so I think it’s more than just money that is important. Good projects, with good underwriting, with good construction plans that can get completed are financeable. What we’re doing is we’re looking with our companies – and there’s enormous enthusiasm both from the Ghanaian private sector as well as the public sector to engage with our companies, whether they be large companies like GE or smaller companies like ECC, large companies like ABB, or smaller companies like HPI or Canary. They want to partner with our companies because they know what they’re getting, and they know there’s going to be a commitment to delivering on the promises.

Anchor: That was the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker speaking in Accra.