The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration across the globe may be a death certificate signaling the end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). “AGOA is finished. It is dead in the water,” said Alex Owino in Nairobi, according to Africa Confidential.
Owino is a former advisor to Kenya’s treasury under President Uhuru Kenyatta. “AGOA will be formally torn up in September when it is due to expire,” added Owino, Africa-confidential.com reported.
According to the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, “The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a United States Trade Act enacted on May 18, 2000 to create market access for products of sub-Saharan origin to the USA.”
With its motto of “trade not aid,” AGOA—which has provided tariff-free access to U.S. markets for African manufacturers—has been at the root of Washington’s trade policy since its approval in 2000.
Before the recent tariffs AGOA legislation guaranteed duty-free access for African goods and helped industrialize the continent, creating hundreds of thousands of textile jobs, noted Deutsche Welle on its website dw.com.
Since its enactment, AGOA, with its “soft power” objectives, has assisted in part in improving U.S.-Africa relations on the surface. However, the downside for the continent includes imposing “market-based economies” and “rule of law” commitment in reducing barriers to U.S. trade and investment.
AGOA has played a pivotal role in transforming the U.S.-sub-Saharan African relationship, however, with the previously mentioned strings attached. The relationship has gone from one that is primarily aid-based to a mutually beneficial business partnership.
For over 25 years, the act has allowed duty-free access to the U.S. market for more than 1,800 products from at least 32 eligible sub-Saharan African countries, spanning sectors such as textiles, apparel, food, and machinery.
In December 2024, on its website, the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in an article titled, “The AGOA Ship Is Sinking: Congress Must Act Now to Save It,” encouraged the incoming Trump administration to go “‘beyond AGOA’ with a broader engagement that would address the key sectors likely to drive African development, including critical minerals.”
In a recent April 8 article, “How Should Africa Respond to Trump’s New Tariffs?” CSIS suggests the AGOA ship has sailed and raises the question, “how should Africa respond?”
The inordinate tariffs announced by President Trump have shaken up trade relations between Washington and several African countries. In addition, it has raised concerns across the African continent.
According to CSIS, in the Trump administration’s move to impose sweeping tariffs on almost all countries, Africa was not spared. In its bid to “rectify the (so-called) U.S. trade deficit” and encourage the … revival of the U.S. domestic manufacturing and industrial sectors, all but two African countries (Burkina Faso and Seychelles) were hit by the new tariffs,” CSIS noted.
While President Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, and based on fairly simplistic calculations, the April 2 tariff announcement began with a basic 10% baseline tariff on almost all countries.
On top of the baseline 10% tariffs, the president also announced higher tariffs on countries with which the U.S. has its largest trade deficits. The Trump administration claims other country’s trade barriers and unfair tariffs place U.S. businesses at a disadvantage.
Thus, for 51 African countries, 29 countries will face the baseline 10% tariff while 22 other countries will face tariffs up to a whopping 50 percent for almost all their products, excluding a short list of products such as certain critical minerals deemed necessary to the U.S. economy.
One of the African nations hit hardest by U.S. tariffs is tiny landlocked Lesotho, a small, impoverished, mountain country, surrounded by South Africa. “First an insult. Now tariffs. Trump has made it tough for Lesotho,” read a Washington Post headline. “‘Shocking:’ Trump hits Lesotho Levi’s and Calvin Klein denim exporter, with 50% tariff,” read a USA Today headline.
The country with the world’s highest tariff, who President Trump referred to erroneously as the nation “nobody has ever heard of,” in his message to the joint session of Congress earlier this year, is in the process of sending a “high-level delegation to the U.S. to try and ward off what it fears could be a death blow to its economy,” reported USA Today.
The manufacturer of denim and other textiles used in American brands account for more than a tenth of Lesotho’s Gross Domestic Product, reported the consulting firm Oxford Economics.
“The reciprocal tariffs effectively nullify the preferences that sub-Saharan African countries enjoy under AGOA,” South Africa’s foreign and trade ministers said in a joint statement, published in dw.com. The trade agreement in September 2025 and hopes for a renewal are fading, experts note.
How should Africa respond? According to CSIS, “… if there was ever a time for African countries to consolidate a U.S.-Africa strategy, now is the time. The role of the African Union (AU) will be critical to marshal a coordinated continental response (with South Africa at the helm) may now look beyond the U.S. for new markets.”
With a diversified economy, China as its top partner and co-member of BRICS, South Africa may now look beyond the U.S. for new markets, noted analyst Daniel Silke to dw.com. He is the director of the Cape Town-based Political Futures Consultancy.
“The political consequences, which are deeply connected through the economy, are going to be far-reaching and may not be wanted from Washington as a result,” Silke concluded.
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