Africa Grows

As SAEDF’s Chairman Ambassador Andrew Young and others have suggested, U.S. Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (NY) last week introduced legislation to establish a Haitian-American Enterprise Fund. Modeled after SAEDF and other successful Enterprise Funds, the legislation is intended to promote the development of the Haitian private sector following a devastating earthquake in January 2010.

Ambassador Young first suggested the creation of a Haitian-American Enterprise Fund in a January Huffington Post op-ed titled, “Rebuilding Haiti With Public Purpose Capitalism.”

Funded initially by U.S foreign aid dollars, the Haitian-American Enterprise Fund will help spur long term, sustainable economic growth by providing capital to small and medium sized indigenous businesses through loans and equity investments.

Enterprise Fund expert Francis Skrobiszewski also recommended a Haitian version of SAEDF in a recent story in Forbes: “If the United States is committed to doing something quickly and truly sustainable to relieve conditions and rebuild Haiti, a starting point for Haiti’s reconstruction must be in the form of the ‘enterprise fund’ model of a publicly capitalized, privately managed investment fund designed to accelerate private-sector growth.”

For a section-by-section summary of the bill as well as the full text, please click here. Thewritten testimony from Mr. Skrobiszewski is available on the Committee’s site, as well as an archived webcast of the hearing.

Ambassador Andrew Young, Chairman of the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund, discussed how the SAEDF model could help in rebuilding Haiti. This column originally appeared on February 5, 2010, in the the Politico.

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti, the Rev. Pat Robertson took to the airwaves to declare that Haiti had “made a pact to the devil” and had “been cursed by one thing after the other.”

But Robertson, of all people, should know that the devil is in the details. In reality, if not for the brave people in Haiti, today we all might be speaking French in Fort Lauderdale, eating snails in Sarasota and passing francs in Baton Rouge.

Why? Few high school textbooks mention it, but more than 200 years ago, the Emperor Napoleon had his sights set on Florida. France already owned the 14 U.S. states known as the Louisiana Territory and hoped to annex Florida, too, to bring France back to glory.

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