Opportunity for African Businessmen and women to access foreign

capital/grants

Accra, Aug. 23, GNA - An opportunity has been created for African businessmen to learn how to package their business plans to attract foreign capital to expand their business or create new ones, Ms. Irene Cole, Chief Executive Officer of Atlantic Resorts Limited, a US-based real estate concern said on Monday.

To this end, an African Business Summit is to be held at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, United States from October 17 to October 24,2004 to bridge the gap between Africa and the US, in business, social welfare, culture, tourism and trade.

Briefing the media at the Accra launch of the summit dubbed: "How to Achieve the American Dream", Ms Cole said the event was to afford Ghanaians as well as African businessmen and women the opportunity to meet and discuss business with their counterparts in America. She said the summit, technically a networking and capacity building activity, would make it easier for businesses in Ghana to access capital for the accelerated growth and development of the economy.

The conference is aimed at introducing businessmen and women across Africa to investors, bankers, lenders that are ready to give loans to companies with viable projects in Africa.

But the summit is principally to expose the technicality of where to look for, find and keep money and how to finance business projects for African businessmen and businesswomen.

It would also educate other participants, particularly those from the nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) on how to access available grants.

The summit would also address other issues among which are how to establish and maintain a branch of an African company in other countries, how to meet and keep business foreign associates and how to buy residential and commercial properties with other peoples' money in America.

Ms Cole said that it was a pity that most African businessmen were not aware that "there is so much money out there that you can access to develop the Continent and make life more meaningful for Africans". She said the only way of creating awareness was to organise such events to expose Africans to how they could alleviate poverty on the Continent.

"What we don't have is the knowledge to get money to develop. But we have everything to make us rich."

Ms. Cole said her outfit in conjunction with Africa Infrastructure Investment Agency Limited, a Ghanaian public-private partnership infrastructure financing and development advisory services, would be recruiting prospective businessmen and women to participate in the summit.

The recruitment would end on August 31, 2004. Successful participants would then be required to make available 5,000 dollars to cover visas, airline tickets, membership fees, travel insurance, certificates, seven days hotel accommodation, workshop fees, identification cards, meals, debits cards among other things.