US Africa Trade Desk at the AmCham Business Summit 2026: Advancing Mutual Prosperity

US Africa Trade Desk will be represented at the AmCham Business Summit 2026, taking place September 9–10, 2026 at the Windsor Golf Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. Our Director of International Operations, Jeanah Lacey, will join the Summit on September 9.

The AmCham Business Summit is East Africa’s leading platform for U.S.–East Africa trade and investment, co-convened by the American Chamber of Commerce, Kenya and the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, and co-hosted with the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry. Regional partners include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Chambers of Commerce from Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. Now in its fifth year, the Summit brings together business leaders, policymakers, investors, and innovators from across East Africa and the United States to advance two-way trade and investment across market access, financing, innovation, and policy frameworks spanning seven high-growth sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, digital economy, health, infrastructure, energy, and critical supply chains.

This year’s Summit convenes under the theme “Advancing Mutual Prosperity Through Trade & Investment,” held as the United States marks 250 years of independence. The program looks at what that milestone means for the next chapter of American enterprise abroad — anchored in U.S. innovation, reciprocal partnership, and global leadership, with dedicated tracks for business-to-government engagement and facilitated business-to-business matchmaking between U.S. and East African companies.

Jeanah will join a discussion on how AfCFTA implementation can unlock commercial opportunity and long-term U.S. investment in Africa’s regional value chains. As she puts it: “Companies don’t invest in trade rules. They invest in the opportunities those rules make commercially possible.” Her participation reflects the work US Africa Trade Desk does every day: category management, trade deal structuring, and financing that build durable, vertically integrated trade corridors between the U.S. and African markets across apparel, agriculture, and trade finance. For USATD, AfCFTA implementation isn’t an abstract policy milestone — it’s a framework that, done well, translates into the kind of commercial fundamentals that make regional value chains investable at scale.

Mutual prosperity, in our view, is not a slogan — it’s a function of trade structured so that capital, capacity, and commercial value move together on both sides of the relationship. That’s the conversation Jeanah looks forward to having in Nairobi.