This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

      Photo: Mr. Owusu, CIR Intern, Franklin and Marshall, Ms. Muyangwa, Director, Africa Program at the Wilson Center, Mr. Zheng, CIR Intern, Georgetown University.         The Wilson Center's event on opportunities and challenges of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was insightfully supportive of the new trade agreement. Trade refers to the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often (but not always) in exchange for money. A Free Trade Zone (FTZ), is a geographic area where goods may be traded without the imposition of any barriers by customs authorities. These barriers include tariffs and quotas. Free Trade Zone examples include the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Southern African Development Community Free Trade Area.  The AfCFTA seeks to create a unified continental market with minimal trade and migration barriers and unified trade policies to facilitate the easy movement of peo...

WASHINGTON - May 21, 2018 - PRLog -- The Federal Communications Commission's ("FCC's") Office of Communications Business Opportunities ("OCBO") and Media Bureau ("MB"), and the FCC's Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment ("ACDDE") will host a one-day supplier diversity workshop for small, minority-owned, women-owned and other diverse businesses. The workshop will teach small business entrepreneurs how to navigate corporate supplier diversity programs; identify successful strategies utilized by diverse entrepreneurs who do business with corporate entities; and enable one-on-one networking between participating firms and workshop participants to increase awareness about the expectations of procurement managers responsible for goods and services contracting. Workshop presentations and one-on-one consulting will be provided by representatives from various industry sectors, including voice, video and data providers, ...

WASHINGTON - May 18, 2018 - PRLog -- William Michael Cunningham will moderate a panel on the Future of Impact Investing at the Blockchain for Social Impact Conference 2018, to be held on Friday, June 1, 2018. The United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC will host the conference. The Conference is being organized by the ConsenSys Social Impact team, and will focus on "areas where blockchain technology could be instrumental in revolutionizing existing systems and making a significant impact." The Conference will focus on four major global challenge areas: Agriculture, Infrastructure, Democracy, and Refugees. Conference organizers noted, "As blockchain becomes the shared infrastructure for more and more people to collaborate with one another, participate in global marketplaces, access essential services, and protect their personal data and assets, it is the responsibility of the larger tech community and governments around the world to make sure this tec...

The most recent Africa Policy Breakfast, “Crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” (DRC) was held on May 16th and hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foreign Affairs & National Security Task Force. The discussion considered options for regional and international responses to the situation in the DRC, a Central African country rich in natural resources, with 79 million people. The country has industrial diamonds, cobalt, and copper along with about 50% of the potential hydroelectric power for the continent. The Policy Breakfast started with a brief introduction to the current crisis in the DRC and moved onto discuss potential solutions. The country has experienced many conflicts, causing the displacement of 1.7 million people in 2017. This tumultuous period can be attributed to a myriad of overlapping factors including the destabilizing historical role of Western countries vis a vis the DRC's colonial past, the corrupting influence of foreign corporations who v...