Savannah Council on World Affairs Lecture Series

For decades, American economic policy and the private sector have focused on Europe and Asia/China, tending to pay scant attention to opportunities and developments in the 54 countries of Africa. That focus is quickly becoming outdated as awareness grows of the various ways Africa will play a more important economic role in the world over the next decades. Beyond contributing critical minerals that the U.S. and the developed world need to power artificial intelligence and renewable energy, Africa is also becoming a bigger and more prosperous market as its population doubles and the populations of the northern hemisphere decline. Join us as Laird Treiber, former Senior Foreign Service Officer and past Director of Trade and Investment Programs for the Corporate Council on Africa, provides expert analysis on how we can better take advantage of economic and business opportunities and compete with other powers to realize benefits for both the U.S. and Africa. Laird Treiber is currently Professorial Lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Laird Treiber is a professorial lecturer at the Institute for African Studies at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, where he teaches a course on Africa in the global economy. Prior to this position, Laird was a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. He worked most recently as the State Department’s Senior Liaison for Prosper Africa, a program to promote trade and investment between the U.S. and Africa. He previously served as the Economic Minister Counselor at the U.S. Embassies in South Africa, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as earlier tours in Poland, Mexico and Washington. From 2018-19, he was the Senior Adviser to the President of the Corporate Council on Africa, where
he helped organize major international trade and investment conferences. He has worked extensively on issues related to energy, environment and climate change, finance, trade, intellectual property rights and aviation.

Over the course of his career, Laird has developed broad experience counseling U.S. and foreign companies on how to evaluate economic and political risk. Laird received an undergraduate degree from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, the Master of International Affairs from Columbia and a Master of Security Studies from National Defense University. He is also a Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.