South Africa’s Trade and Industry Minister, Dr Rob Davies, travelled to Washington, DC in the United States of Africa (sic – a Freudian slip?) on 22 September 2016 for the 15th Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum. The AGOA Forum is an annual forum taking place on an alternating basis between Sub-Saharan Africa and the United States. The 14th Forum was hosted by Gabon last year.
The theme for this year’s Forum is titled “Maximising U.S.-Africa Trade and Investment: AGOA and Beyond”. The forum will focus on the implementation of AGOA utilization strategies, as well as, the U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa trade and investment relationship beyond AGOA.
AGOA is a unilateral US trade preference programme that provides duty-free quota free treatment for over 6400 tariff lines into the United States market. President Obama signed into law the Trade Preferences Extension Act of 2015 that contained the AGOA Extension and Enhancement Act that extended AGOA for 10 years until 2025 with South Africa included.
