Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)

Posted by Staff Writer on Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 3:02pm.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a United States Trade Act that significantly enhances U.S. market access for (currently) 39 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

The Act originally covered the 8-year period from October 2000 to September 2008, but amendments signed into law by U.S.President George Bush in July 2004 further extend AGOA to 2015. At the same time, a special dispensation relating to apparel was extended by three years to 2007. On 20 December 2006, key changes to AGOA were signed into law, extending the garment provisions to 2012. In June 2007, a revised textile certificate of origin was published to give effect to the “abundant supply” provisions contained in the most recent legislative changes.

AGOA builds on existing U.S. trade programs by expanding the (duty-free) benefits previously available only under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) program. Duty-free access to the U.S. market under the combined AGOA/GSP program stands at approximately 7,000 product tariff lines, including the roughly 1,800 product tariff lines that were added to the GSP by the AGOA legislation. Notably, these include items such as apparel and footwear, wine, certain motor vehicle components, a variety of agricultural products, chemicals, steel and others.