Why Atlanta Is Poised to Become South Africa’s Gateway to the U.S.

If the U.S. envoy to South Africa has his way, Atlanta is poised to become the focal point of a bilateral relationship that is recalibrating amid seismic shifts in the rainbow nation’s political makeup and the broader global landscape.

In March, Ambassador Reuben Brigety brought a delegation of government and industry leaders to the city of Martin Luther King Jr. to kickstart what his office is calling the Atlanta Phambili initiative — Atlanta Forward in Zulu.

Even before historic elections that saw the African National Congress lose its majority in Parliament for the first time in the young nation’s 30-year history, turbulence had become a constant in U.S.-South Africa ties.

A member of the BRICS nations set on testing the international order, South Africa in recent years has diverged from the U.S. on important foreign policy points, refusing to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and levying a genocide charge against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, interpersonal relationships remain warm. Businesspeople are showing increasing appetite for engagement with the U.S., and policy makers are seeking to boost trade and investment to help tackle poverty and widespread unemployment.

The relationship needed an “anchor,” Mr. Brigety said, for the “affirmative aspects” that such “non-trivial disagreements” risked setting adrift.

For the Jacksonville, Fla., native, a “son of the South” with a deep background in education, Atlanta was the perfect fit.

“Notwithstanding those [disagreements] or others that may appear in the future, we have a robust affirmative agenda that it’s in our mutual interest to work through, on everything from health care to job creation, trade, investment, education, technology transfer, logistics, and the like. And it occurred to us that all those things are very well represented in the U.S. city of Atlanta,” the ambassador told Global Atlanta in a phone interview.

The city’s civil-rights heritage, with deep ties to South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, and the Atlanta University Center, with historically Black colleges like Spelman and Morehouse, added to an argument framed by the fact that many see Atlanta as “the mecca of Black excellence in the United States in the context of a multiracial environment.”

“These are all things that really resonate with South Africans,” Mr. Brigety said, in addition to the crucial Delta Air Lines Inc. nonstop flights to Johannesburg and Cape Town and newfound one-stop connectivity through Ethiopian Airlines.

Atlanta rolled out the red carpet for a high-level delegation that included representatives from the country’s largest banks, its top government agencies for economic development and various companies, along with U.S. government entities.

Besides a program that included business and trade roundtables, visits to universities like Georgia Tech (where Mr. Brigety’s son is a student) and a dinner with civil rights leader, former mayor and Ambassador Andrew Young, Mr. Brigety said it was Atlanta’s rank-and-file that really impressed the group.

“I will tell you quite frankly that the best part best part of the whole thing is that it was as if average Atlantans were in on it,” Mr. Brigety said. “Everybody they talked to — hotel workers, random people they met in coffee shops, hosts at the airport, ladies on the street — everybody was just so warm and welcoming. And we couldn’t have planned that.”

Where the relationship goes from here, however, remains to be seen.

South Africa’s formation of a government of national unity after the May elections has injected some uncertainty into the follow-up process, as the embassy is waiting to connect with new appointees at government departments and agencies like the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, Mr. Brigety said.

On the U.S. side, South Africa’s participation in the preferential trade arrangement known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, is also being reviewed by Congress.

And presidential elections in the U.S. put a question mark around whether Mr. Brigety, appointed by President Joe Biden, will get to stay in his post long enough to solidify the initiative, though he sees Atlanta Phambili “as a legacy issue for my tenure as ambassador.”

“Atlanta Phambili is not an event; it is a process.”

Michelle Constant, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa, said the ambassador has kept the focus on Atlanta after returning to South Africa. He recently spoke at a forum with Rand Merchant Bank, a new member of the chamber, and mentioned the initiative yet again.

“There’s no doubt that with regard to the ambassador and his thinking, Atlanta Phambili is a critical one for him,” Ms. Constant told Global Atlanta. “The challenge has been that there has not been a huge amount of publicity here in South Africa.”

Ms. Constant, who was also with the Phambili delegation in Atlanta, sees the “multisectoral” initiative, like Mr. Brigety, as a tangible touch point that can endure regardless of how the bilateral relationship develops. Both American multinationals and South African industrialists have kept a sense of optimism despite external headwinds, she said.

Atlanta’s growing tech industry, Ms. Constant said, dovetails well with South Africa’s role as the continent’s most developed economy, and opportunities to collaborate on manufacturing, space technology and energy abound. Many businesspeople have reached out to the AmCham as a result of the trip.

A big question remains how Atlanta will respond as appetite on the South Africa side grows for a reciprocal mission, she said.

Ms. Constant also suggested that a sister-city link between Atlanta and either Johannesburg or Cape Town would help firm up the relationship, making it less dependent on the ambassador.

“It’s an absolute no-brainer to start driving that forward,” she said.

She added that just as Atlanta is a gateway for South African companies to the U.S., her country could help Atlantans ease into the broader African continent, with universities playing a crucial role in educating the business community on the nuances of its 54 distinct countries.

“There are huge opportunities for cultural intelligence,” she said.

The prospect of a return mission led by Mayor Andre Dickens is being explored, said Paulina Guzman, director of the Mayor’s Office of International and Immigrant Affairs.

“Atlanta Phambili was a vital step in strengthening Atlanta’s ties with the region and we are optimistic about the positive impact these connections and existing partnerships will bring,” Ms. Guzman told Global Atlanta in a statement, noting that a timeline has not yet been determined.

As for a prospective sister city, she said a letter of intent was signed with Cape Town a few years back, “which upon consideration of future strategic partnership opportunities, we can utilize as a model to revitalize existing partnerships.”

Atlanta, Mr. Brigety said, impressed delegates like Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala, who spent time as an exchange student in Georgia as a young man. Standard Bank is the largest bank in Africa.

But part of the interest here goes beyond the dollars and cents to what the city embodies: a place that is making strides in building Black wealth and closing the racial gap. South Africa, Mr. Brigety said, is plagued with a 35 percent unemployment rate, which is even higher for youth.

“The vast majority of that impacts the Black population, so much so that many young South Africans, quite frankly, are really questioning what does freedom mean if I can’t get a job?” Mr. Brigety said. “So the government and private sector and civil society in South Africa is really, really interested in how you crack that nut, and to the extent that Atlanta is doing that work, that is not only an enormous source of practical information for South Africa, but quite frankly, also a source of great inspiration as well.”

Mr. Brigety suggested that the Phambili initiative could create a model for other African visits to Atlanta along the same themes, and that both metro Atlanta and South Africa, whose economies are roughly the same size from a GDP perspective (Atlanta’s is a bit larger), will continue to have various suitors. But they should take to heart this opportunity to link up more closely.

“Atlanta Phambili doesn’t mean you can’t go or engage any other city in America for anything else you need, but it is to say that Atlanta has everything you need, essentially,” he said.

Mr. Brigety hopes to see an Atlanta group in South Africa by the end of the calendar year.

“Our South African friends are very, very eager to come back to Atlanta to deepen this relationship. And I have said, ‘That’s fine, but not before Atlanta comes to South Africa.’”

That’s a key next step in moving things Phambili — ahead.