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African economies have changed and trade relations need to evolve since the U.S. first started offering duty-free access to certain countries under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman in a Bloomberg interview. Since AGOA first started in 2000, African economies have become more integrated and they’ve changed in terms of demographics, development and technology, Froman said in Kigali, Rwanda, at the World Economic Forum. A deadline is looming...

Following the concessions on US imports to South Africa in January this year, another chicken storm is brewing as local poultry producers face harsh punishment if they fail to comply with new brine limits. The poultry industry has six months to adjust to new maximum levels of brine, a fluid, which according to the industry, is injected into chicken and other meat products to retain succulence and flavour. The long anticipated amendment, which was announced in January 2014, was published in the Government Gazette in April. What the new...

Last week, the American Embassy hosted a party labelled “The Mother of All Braais”. It was designed to crow over several intertwined “new facts on the ground” in American-South African bilateral economic relations. The first was that South Africa continues to be included among the countries that are eligible for duty free exports into the US under the renewed African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for the next decade. AGOA is an American law, first passed at the turn of the 21st century, that allows eligible African nations to...

Swaziland has one month to work on the remaining AGOA benchmarks as this year’s AGOA review cycle will begin in June until September. AGOA is the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a United States Trade Act enacted on May 18, 2000 as Public Law 106 of the 200th Congress.  The legislation significantly enhances market access to the US for qualifying Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. While working on the remaining benchmarks, which are amendments to the Public Order Act and Suppression of Terrorism Act which are currently being...

Kenya’s industrialists on Tuesday signed an agreement with a regional investment body to help in the efforts to promote trade and investment under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). The deal, which was inked in Nairobi between the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) and the East Africa Trade And Investment Hub (EATIH), will also support policy reform activities and the expansion of trading avenues. KAM CEO Phyllis Wakiaga said the deal strengthens KAM’s commitment in seizing the opportunity to realise better business...

The extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) by 10 years would allow for the development of a mature trade relationship between sub-Saharan countries and the US, ambassador Patrick Gaspard said on Monday. Agoa, which was first enacted in 2000, has previously been extended in five-year tranches. It allows 39 African nations access to the US market by eliminating import levies on 7,000 products. SA risked losing the preferential access after a dispute with the US over the latter’s meat exports. Speaking on the sidelines...

United States Ambassador Patrick Gaspard on Monday hosted “The Mother of all Braais” at his home in Pretoria to celebrate the end of a long and bitter trade dispute between the US and South Africa over American meat imports – and the successful renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). American and South African guests dined on grilled US chicken – which had been barred from South Africa for many years – and washed it down with US bourbon to toast the resumption of US chicken, beef and pork imports. The agreement...

What consumers see in shops when they buy imported US chicken is certainly not tasty-looking when it arrives in frozen block form, noted the South African Poultry Association (Sapa). Sapa chief executive officer Kevin Lovell has taken issue with comments made by Jim Sumner who is president of the USA Poultry amp; Egg Export Council (USAPEEC) in an article published on Fin24. Read the article here: US poultry a win for SA consumers - council Due to pressure from the USAPEEC via a few US senators, South Africa agreed in the US African...

"We are thrilled to be back in the South African market after about 17 years," Jim Sumner, president of the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council (USAPEEC) told Fin24 during his visit to Cape Town this week. About 17 years ago the USAPEEC was put out of the SA market due to a complaint of dumping by the SA government and the local poultry industry at the time. The US African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), renewed by US lawmakers last year, eliminates import levies on more than 7 000 products ranging from textiles to manufactured items...

Only two out of the 13 Botswana companies that signed to take up preferential trade opportunities with the United States through the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) at its inception in 2000 have prospered through the trade deal, the government has announced. Addressing delegates at a US Embassy-funded seminar aimed at appraising local businesses on new amendments to the Agoa legislation, Investment, Trade and Industry minister Vincent Seretse said the majority of local businesses had failed to reap AGOA benefits in the last 15...

Botswana has a more competitive advantage over its sub-Saharan Africa counterpart countries when it comes to utilising the benefits of the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), a Lesotho government official has said.  Speaking yesterday at a seminar aimed at sensitising the business community and the civil society on the new AGOA legislation (2015-2025), Joshua Setipa, who is Lesotho’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Cooperatives and Marketing said Botswana needed to focus on a number of elements in order to fully benefit from AGOA,...

Kenyan apparel exports could grow by 5 percent this year to $400 million after the extension of a preferential U.S. trade deal with African nations, according to an industry body. East Africa’s biggest economy exported clothing worth $380 million in 2015, when the U.S. extended its African Growth and Opportunity Act agreement by a decade, according to Phyllis Wakiaga, the Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers. “The 10 year extension of the AGOA agreement has offered African manufacturers more confidence to...

Times are tough for South African consumers. Devastating drought and a weakened rand have pushed up the price of food. It's becoming hugely difficult for families to put food on the table. Meanwhile, local poultry producers are again discrediting their imported competition and in turn threatening to push up prices that hurt SA consumers. After negotiations that spanned much of last year, US president Barack Obama finally renewed South Africa's Agoa status. And despite reservations from some critics, the deal is an important one for the SA...

The United States Agency for International Development’s West Africa Trade and Investment Hub (Trade Hub) has trained coordinators from seven West African countries to assist businesses with the processes and documentation required for exporting to the United States under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The two-day training, which was conducted between April 12 and 13, 2016, saw coordinators from AGOA Trade Resource Centres (ATRCs) in Nigeria as well as Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Senegal...

The U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID)’s West Africa Trade and Investment Hub, on Friday said that it recently trained coordinators in West Africa to boost business and trade with the U.S. The U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Nigeria said in a statement that the coordinators were drawn from the Republics of Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal. According to it, the Coordinators are to assist businesses with the processes and documentations required for exporting to the U.S. under the...

With the demise of the Doha Development Round at the World Trade Organization Ministerial in Nairobi this past December, the multilateral approach to global trade negotiations has largely ended. Given that the number of regional trade agreements has increased from 70 in 1990 to more than 270 today, it appears that it is every region for itself when it comes to global trade.  Tripartite Free Trade Agreement and Continental Free Trade Agreement In certain respects, Africa is well positioned in this new era regional trade relations. The...

Ford’s commitment to spend an additional R2.5-billion at its Pretoria assembly plant has been held up as an important sign of confidence in South Africa and proof of the two-way benefits of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, known as Agoa. Noting the importance of the automotive industry to the country, South African Minister of Trade and Industry Dr Rob Davies said: “To date we have invested more than R25-billion in the motoring industry.” Speaking at an event in Pretoria where Ford announced expansion of local production,...

Last year, South Africa was in a panic about a threat by the US not to renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), and we all breathed a sigh of relief when Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies brokered a deal between the local and US poultry industries. The arrival of the first shipment of US poultry on our shores weeks ago should have been the closing scene to the Agoa-chicken saga. But smarting from the deal, which saw SA lifting antidumping duties on US bone-in chicken and US President Barack Obama renewing our Agoa status,...

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) is a nonreciprocal trade preference programme that provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access for certain exports into the US market. The purpose of Agoa is to expand US trade and investment with sub-Saharan Africa, stimulate economic growth, and encourage economic integration. Agoa’s greatest beneficiaries have been petroleum-exporting African states. SA is Agoa’s most substantial nonpetroleum exporter beneficiary, especially in the automobile and perishable food...

The US Embassy in Gaborone has called on the Botswana business community to seize the enhanced trading opportunities offered by the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) to strengthen bilateral trade ties between the two countries, while improving the local economy. Addressing a market access seminar organised by the American Business Council (ABC) in Gaborone on Tuesday, US Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission, Tim Smith, said local firms should take advantage of the recent extension of Botswana’s membership of AGOA by 10 more years to...

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has issued an interim final rule that establishes a petition process to review the eligibility of countries for the benefits of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, as required by the Trade Preferences Extension Act of 2015. This process will supplement the annual (normal cycle) request for public comments on whether a beneficiary sub-Saharan African country is meeting the AGOA eligibility criteria and requirements. Petitions filed under this new process must identify the SSA country that...

The United States Congress passed the African Growth and Opportunity Act into law in 2000 in order to promote US and African trade relations and contribute to economic development on the African continent through export-led growth. AGOA and the US - African trade relationship has been placed under the spotlight in recent months, particularly with regards to the extension of the Act towards September last year and around South Africa's (as the largest AGOA beneficiary) continued benefits under the programme. AGOA, unlike other preferential...

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a nonreciprocal trade preference programme that provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access for certain exports into the US market. The law requires the US President to determine which countries can take advantage of these benefits based on whether they meet certain criteria, including progress towards the establishment of a market-based economy; rule of law; elimination of barriers to US trade and investment; economic policies to reduce poverty; efforts to combat...

The six month AGOA Strategy Development Initiative headed by the Honorary Consul of Zambia in California, Robert Sichinga Jnr and a team from the UCLA Anderson School of Management is complete and the final report was sent to the Zambia Development Agency. The final presentation was made at the UCLA Anderson School of Management  on Friday March 11th in the presence of officials from the Consular Corp representing four other countries, the representative from the office Congresswoman Karen Bass, US business people and members of the...

South Africa will retain preferential access for its farming goods to the world’s biggest market after meeting benchmarks set by President Barack Obama to allow the import and sale of U.S. meat products. “I have determined that suspending the application of duty-free treatment to certain goods is no longer necessary to promote compliance by South Africa with such requirements,” Obama said on Monday in a proclamation. Obama said in January the U.S. would suspend South Africa’s preferential access for agricultural products under the...

Presidential Proclamation -- To Take Certain Actions Under the African Growth and Opportunity Act TO TAKE CERTAIN ACTIONS UNDER THE AFRICAN GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY ACT - - - - - - - BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION   1. In Proclamation 7350 of October 2, 2000, the President designated the Republic of South Africa (South Africa) as a beneficiary sub-Saharan African country for purposes of section 506A(a)(1) of the Trade Act of 1974 (the "1974 Act") (19 U.S.C. 2466a(a)(1)), as added by section 111(a) of...

Botswana would develop new strategies during the financial year 2016-17 to take better advantage of opportunities under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), acting trade minister Sadique Kebonang told the country's Parliament, according to an African daily. The new strategies are anticipated to increase competitiveness and diversification of beneficiary exports to the US. Botswana is one of the countries with limited success in utilising the preferential market under the US AGOA. Since the commencement of AGOA, Botswana...

United States ambassador to South Africa Patrick Gaspard, says with the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) trade agreement ironed out the hope is that it can now start growing the local economy. Agoa is an agreement that opens up American markets to South African goods. One of the most contentious aspects has been the import of chicken into the local market. Gaspard says the negotiations were tough, but always dignified. “I have to say that ‘sorted out’ is one of my favourite South African phrases – it sums...

South Africa is now importing pork from the US after the Obama administration threatened to suspend the country's trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). US pork was originally banned by South Africa due to the threat of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS). However, the US argued that there is no documented scientific case of PRRS being transmitted to domestic livestock through imported pork. Following the opening by South Africa, the US can now ship a variety of raw, frozen pork, including...

South Africa will continue to receive trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) after 325 tons of US chicken hit South African supermarkets this week. US officials on Wednesday announced that the US chicken imports had already been distributed to South African supermarkets while US ambassador to South Africa, Patrick Gospard, said that the trade dispute over US chicken had been resolved and that South Africa had met the requirements to keep its AGOA trade benefits. "We are delighted by the announcement from...

The South African Poultry Association (SAPA) has cautiously welcomed the arrival of the first consignment of chicken products from the United States (US). The first shipment of American poultry arrived in Durban last Friday and should be on the shelves in two weeks. The South Africa government late last year concluded negotiations with US authorities on the import of American poultry, beef and pork. Government was under pressure to open its market to certain meat products from the US or face compromising trade...