Top African officials suffer from summit fatigue, but the recent U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit wasn’t like other summits dominated by politicians and bureaucrats, according to an editorial by William Wallace in FinancialTimes.

Thousands of Africans flew in and dozens of meetings were going on at any given time across Washington, D.C. on the sidelines of the main events. It was an eclectic carnival of players, Wallace writes.

For the U.S. business community this was an eye opener. You do not always have to know the president of a country these days to get things done. There is a dynamic array of other potential African partners, most of them in the private sector, and most of them, businessmen and women.

Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, refuted the widely held belief that the U.S. is waking up to Africa’s commercial potential only because China is so far ahead. “It was not a political meeting,” he said. “It was not even a catch-up meeting. It was business people leading the way.”

Kaberuka said companies such as Coca-Cola, IBM, GE and JPMorgan have begun shifting their agendas on Africa towards a more healthy mix that places investment and trade higher on the agenda.

Others at the summit commended how Power Africa, an initiative launched by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2013 to bring U.S. expertise to bolster electricity generation, is targeting attention on a critical shortfall, according to Wallace.

Little reminder was needed of the flip side of the transformation the continent is undergoing such as the inadequacy of the public health response to Ebola. But, if the goal was to shift U.S. perceptions of Africa as simply a repository of disease, poverty and war — a place needing handouts, then the US-Africa summit made a healthy start, Wallace wrote.

American perceptions of Africa have long been swayed by the loudest U.S. constituencies with vested interest in the continent. More often than not, these have been non-governmental organisations — the human rights lobby — and faith-based groups. They played a central role for example in focusing U.S. attention on the plight
of the Southern Sudanese during Sudan’s civil war.

The effect has been to distort the complex mix of realities in Africa’s 55 states – seen, as these have often been, through the lens of activists with a narrow agenda – and also to divert resources, Wallace wrote.

U.S. envoys to Africa admit to spending disproportionate amounts of time dealing with flashpoints such as South Sudan and the threat of terrorism coming from countries such as Somalia. They don’t spend much time on commercial opportunities that emerged as African economies have grown and a new class of business consumers.

For a few days in Washington, D.C. that changed.

The first U.S.-Africa summit, attended by nearly 50 African heads of state, took on issues from Islamic extremism to corruption but the dominant theme was Africa’s business potential and the role U.S. companies could play in creating jobs and in mobilizing the needed funds.

It may not quite qualify for what U.S. secretary of state John Kerry called a “pivotal moment in history.” That would be Aug. 4 1914, when the World War I began, not Aug. 4 2014, one delegate quipped.

But there was a shift away from Washington’s habitually paternalistic tone, heralding what Obama described as a “partnership of equals that focuses on African capacity to solve problems, and on Africa’s capacity to grow,” according to FinancialTimes.