Maurice Tempelsman, chairman of Lazare Kaplan Intl. Inc., will serve as chairman of the Corporate Council on Africa Board of Directors, effective March 1. Tempelsman previously served as CCA chairman from 1999 to 2001.  He succeeds Frank Fountain, president of the DaimlerChrysler Foundation. 

“I am honored to have been asked to serve again,” Tempelsman said. “Africa’s growing importance in the global economy, its development needs, and its human and natural resources have an increasingly significant impact on political and economic relations between African nations and the United States in a competitive and perilous world. The Corporate Council on Africa has and will continue to play a growing role in strengthening these relations.”

Since its founding in 1993, the Corporate Council on Africa has been the leading American nonprofit, tax-exempt organization dedicated to enhancing trade and investment ties between the United States and the 53 countries of Africa. CCA works closely with governments, multilateral groups and business to improve the African continent’s trade and investment climate and to raise the profile of Africa in the U.S. business community. The American companies that make up the Corporate Council on Africa represent nearly 85 percent of all U.S. private sector investment in Africa.

JCK