Published On 12/12/2025
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Last update: 05:49 (Mecca time)
On Wednesday, a committee in the US House of Representatives approved a draft law renewing the preferential trade program with Africa for an additional 3 years, without mentioning any exclusion of South Africa, as the US trade envoy had hinted.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which was first passed in 2000 to provide duty-free entry into the US market for eligible countries and products in sub-Saharan Africa, expired last September, and hundreds of thousands of jobs in Africa are estimated to depend on it.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday that the Trump administration was open to a one-year extension, but might exclude South Africa, which he described as a “unique problem.”
The House Ways and Means Committee said the AGOA extension bill passed by a vote of 37 to 3, calling the trade initiative “a cornerstone of economic relations between the United States and sub-Saharan African countries.”
“Any prolonged pause in the African Growth and Opportunity Act will create a vacuum that malign actors such as China and Russia will seek to fill,” the statement added.
The project will be passed to the full House of Representatives, but it is not yet clear when it will be discussed.
South Africa is struggling to stay within AGOA
South Africa’s Department of Trade said it was doing everything it could to ensure the country was included in any extension of the program, despite a deterioration in relations with the United States during Trump’s second term.
Trump criticized Africa’s largest economy for what he called his policies related to addressing racial inequality, while Greer said that South Africa should reduce customs duties and non-tariff barriers to American products in exchange for Washington reducing the 30% duties it imposed on South African goods last August.
South Africa asserts that the Trump administration based its imposition of duties on an inaccurate view of trade relations between the two countries.
A Department of Commerce spokesperson said South Africa was closely monitoring the progress of the AGOA extension bill.