President Joe Biden’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement (PAC-ADE) will make an official visit to Nigeria in July as part of efforts to strengthen bilateral relations between the United States (U.S.) and Nigeria as well as enhance relations with people of Nigerian descent who live in America.
This was disclosed on Tuesday at the end of the U.S.-Nigeria Binational Commission (BNC) in Abuja by the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Kurt M. Campbell. Campbell and Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, had co-chaired the sixth round of the U.S.-Nigeria BNC in Abuja on April 29-30, 2024.
Campbell, who led the U.S. delegation announced a visit of the President’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement to Nigeria in July. He also announced a major symposium in Washington, D.C. in October to bring together American and Nigerian technology leaders.
Recall that as an offshoot of the December 2022 U.S-African Leaders Summit in Washington D.C, President Biden instituted a 12-member advisory council last year, led by Deniece Laurent-Mantey as Executive Director. The PAC-ADE has two Nigerian-Americans as advisers – Osagie Imasogie and Chiney Ogwumike.
Ogwumike is a two-time WNBA All-Star for the Los Angeles Sparks and a full-time, multi-platform ESPN commentator and NBA analyst. She is one of the only full-time professional athletes to also currently hold a full-time regular national sports media broadcast position. In August 2020, she became the first Black woman to host a national daily sports-talk radio show.
Imasogie, on the other hand, is the Chairman of the Investment Bank and SEC/FINRA registered Broker-Dealer, Quoin Capital and Quoin Advisors. In addition, Imasogie is a co-founder of PIPV Capital, a private equity firm that is focused on the life sciences vertical and has invested over $1 billion into that industry. Prior to co-founding PIPV Capital, he established GlaxoSmithKline Ventures and was its founding Vice President.
At the Binational Commission, the U.S. delegation welcomed Tuggar’s vision for the future of Nigeria’s foreign policy as laid out in his 4D doctrine of Democracy, Development, Demography and Diaspora. The two sides discussed how U.S. assistance could augment Nigeria’s efforts in these areas.
Established in 2010, the BNC is the premier platform of official engagement between the Governments of the United States and Nigeria to expand cooperation and advance shared goals and democratic values. This year’s BNC built on the strong foundation agreed during the January 23, 2024 meeting between President Bola Tinubu and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Abuja, as well as the momentum from the last BNC held in Washington, D.C. in February 2020.
This year’s BNC featured five working groups covering a range of issues to advance both countries mutual interests, reaffirming the robust bilateral cooperation enjoyed by the United States and Nigeria. The groups focused on the U.S.-Nigeria partnership in shared prosperity; security cooperation; democracy, governance and accountability; health; and movement of people.
Additionally, the BNC included four discussions on expanding our cooperation to identify solutions to improve outcomes in the areas of: cybercrime, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, food security, and growth in the digital economy and emerging technologies.