The expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the preferential trade arrangement that for more than two decades gave eligible African exporters duty-free access to the United States market, is reshaping trade calculations across the continent, alongside a new wave of tariff measures.
African trade nonetheless expanded through 2025, supported by strong exports of precious metals and agricultural commodities alongside rising imports of transport equipment, according to the UN Economic Commission for Africa. But the AGOA lapse strips away a preference that had underpinned entire export industries, apparel manufacturing chief among them, in countries such as Kenya, Lesotho, and Madagascar, where garment factories built explicitly around duty-free U.S. access now face a materially different cost structure.
The shift arrives as African governments continue the gradual implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, intended to deepen intra-continental commerce and reduce reliance on any single external market. Trade tensions and global uncertainty, including the AGOA lapse, are cited by continental economic bodies as key downside risks to an otherwise improving growth outlook for 2026.
For the Zambezi Institute, AGOA’s expiry is a reminder that preferential access arrangements, however valuable, are ultimately instruments of another country’s policy discretion. It reinforces the long-term case for the priorities this publication has consistently tracked: deeper intra-African trade integration, value addition rather than raw commodity export, and diversified market access that does not leave entire industries exposed to a single trading partner’s decisions.
