February 18, 2010---Foundation announced that it is partnering with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brenthurst Foundation of South Africa and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and organizing a conference to discuss how companies can contribute to economic and social development in Africa.

The meeting, which will take place in Monrovia Liberia on February 24-25, will include representatives from Chevron Corporation, the CocaCola Companies, Marathon Oil, DeBeers Debswana (Pty) Ltd., Fina Bank, Rwanda, the China Export-Import Bank, the China-Africa Development Fund and the China Henan International Cooperation Group (CHICO).
The goal of the dialogue is to engage corporate leaders and analysts from Africa, China and the U.S. on lessons learned in corporate social responsibility and the best strategies to pursue accelerated economic development.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will address the conference.  Liberia is the first African nation to be validated by the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative.
Leading the American delegation will be Ambassador Princeton Lyman of the Council on Foreign Relations and Dr. Witney Schneidman, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and Senior Advisor to the Sullivan Foundation.  They will be joined by LHSF board member His Excellency John Kufor, former President of the Republic of Ghana. Dr. Greg Mills will lead the African delegation that will also include Mozambique's former Prime Minister, Her Excellency Luisa Dias Diogo and Ms. Sheila Khama, Chief Executive Officer of DeBeers Botswana (Pty) LTD.  The Chinese delegation will be led by Professor Yang Guang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The Leon H. Sullivan Foundation was created by Ms. Hope Masters and Ambassador Andrew Young to further the legacy and work of Reverend Leon Sullivan who created the Sullivan Principles, which helped to facilitate the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa, and the Global Sullivan Principles.

In 2006-2007, the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brenthurst Foundation in Johannesburg and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing initiated a collaboration to examine how the U.S. and China were contributing to social and economic development on the African continent.

Please go to: http://www.cfr.org/publication/14998/africachinaus_trilateral_dialogue.html for a report on the collaboration.

(Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201002181091.html)