Collaboration between the USAID East Africa Trade and Investment Hub and the Diaspora Investment Alliance (DIA)

Collaboration between the USAID East Africa Trade and Investment Hub and the Diaspora Investment Alliance (DIA)
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The USAID East Africa Trade and Investment Hub (the Hub) helps to facilitate East African Community (EAC) investment and technology adoption. The project connects investors with investees and builds awareness of opportunities for African and U.S. firms to increase trade and expand business partnerships, particularly under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

On October 2014, members of the East African diaspora gathered in Boston to attend the inaugural Aspen DIAspora Investment Forum for East Africa, an event coordinated between The Aspen Institute’s Diaspora Investment Alliance (DIA) and the U.S. Government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation with support from the USAID East Africa Trade and Investment Hub (EATIH). The Forum served as an opportunity for diaspora to connect and learn various strategic avenues to invest and do business back home. 

In 2015, the Hub signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Aspen Institute’s Diaspora Investment Alliance (DIA). The focus of the collaboration between the Hub and DIA is technology adoption, from the U.S. to the East African region, and investment promotion activities focused on channeling investments from diaspora into East Africa.

The Aspen Institute, in partnership with Rockefeller Foundation, launched the Diaspora Investment Alliance to harness the untapped potential of diaspora communities by more effectively channeling investments from the diaspora into their countries of origin in ways that are beneficial for development. In addition, DIA is working with U.S. investors to set up a Technology Transfer Fund that aims at identifying and bringing viable and easily adoptable American technology into frontier markets like the East African region.

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GFMD Source:

GFMD 2015 - RT 3.2 "Private sector-Government Partnerships to support migrant/diaspora entrepreneurship and job creation, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises​"

Partner(s):

National Government of the United States (Agency for International Development (USAID)); The Aspen Institute (civil society)