After a year of uncertainty, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) was extended through December 31, 2028 when President Donald Trump signed H.R. 6500 into law on September 2, 2026.
This is welcome news for African exporters, workers and investors whose decisions have faced prolonged uncertainty on Agoa’s future. But it would be a mistake to treat the extension as the conclusion of the Agoa debate. The more important conversation starts now.
The extension has bought Africa something it urgently needed: time. But December 2028 is barely two years away and Washington has already made clear that the next iteration of Agoa is unlikely to be a simple continuation of the programme Africa has known for more than a quarter of a century.
The US is signalling a different conversation. The Office of the US Trade Representative has called for a modernised Agoa that delivers greater market access for American businesses and more reciprocal trade. Congressional leaders have also pointed to reform, strategic supply chains, critical minerals and US economic and national security interests. Africa should take those signals seriously.
For much of Agoa’s history, the central negotiation has been about preferential access: which countries qualify, which products enter duty-free and how long the programme will last. The period to 2028 offers an opportunity to answer a bigger question: What should the next US-Africa economic partnership look like?
That question cannot be left to Washington to answer. Before Agoa expired in September 2025, the case for a transitional extension was that it would preserve existing trade while creating space to negotiate for longer-term reform. Africa should now negotiate with a clearer understanding of what it wants and what it brings to the table.
First, that conversation should begin with competitiveness, not preference. While duty-free access matters, market access alone does not make a firm competitive. African exporters still contend with high energy and logistics costs, limited trade finance, infrastructure gaps, standards challenges, weak supplier networks and productivity constraints.
The next two years should be treated as an industrial competitiveness window. Countries need to identify the sectors where US market access can support investment, jobs and value addition, then address the constraints holding them back. The objective for Africa should not be simply to preserve today’s exports but to enter 2028 with stronger industries.
Second, the same window should be used to rethink how Agoa interacts with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Agoa has historically operated largely through national eligibility, while Africa is simultaneously trying to build regional value chains and a continental market. The next framework should recognise this changing economic geography.
A garment exported from one African country should be able to incorporate more inputs produced elsewhere on the continent. The same principle should apply increasingly to pharmaceuticals, agro-processing, automotive production and other value chains where competitive production may require capabilities spread across several economies. This way AfCFTA can provide the scale and regional production networks, while access to the US market provides additional demand that helps those networks become commercially viable.
Third, Africa needs to approach reciprocity differently. It may be tempting to view Washington’s calls for greater reciprocity as a threat to a preference programme designed to support African development. But the trade environment has changed. The US is increasingly framing trade through market access, economic security, strategic supply chains and competition with China. Congress has made that explicit in linking the latest extension to critical minerals and reducing US dependence on China.
Africa should therefore enter that conversation with its own proposition. The continent holds resources important to global energy and technology supply chains. It offers opportunities for diversified sourcing and has growing markets for American goods, services, technology and investment.
Africa should be equally clear about what it seeks in return. Its ambition should extend beyond market access for African commodities to include investment in processing and manufacturing, technology transfer, stronger supply chains, trade finance and greater participation by African firms in the value created from African resources.
Critical minerals illustrate the choice. A future US-Africa trade relationship centred on securing African minerals for processing elsewhere would reproduce an old economic model under a new geopolitical rationale. A stronger partnership should use US demand and investment to build more processing and industrial capability in Africa itself.
Fourth, Africa needs to arrive at the negotiations with greater coherence. Agoa eligibility remains national and countries will naturally have different interests. But on questions such as AfCFTA alignment, regional rules of origin, value addition, critical minerals and the broad principles of a future US-Africa trade relationship, fragmented negotiating positions weaken Africa’s hand. The African Union, AfCFTA institutions, governments and the private sector have work to do before 2028.
Industry must be close to the process. Firms know where preferences are working, where investment is being held back and which changes would alter sourcing and production decisions. The past year has reinforced a familiar lesson: trade-policy uncertainty has a commercial cost. Investment decisions are made years ahead.
Factories, supplier networks and industrial infrastructure cannot be planned confidently around repeated eleventh-hour extensions. Whatever succeeds the current arrangement should therefore provide a longer investment horizon.
Agoa future success should not be measured by whether Africa preserves the same programme indefinitely. After more than a quarter of a century, market access should increasingly be used to build productive capabilities that make African firms competitive with or without preference.
By the time 2028 arrives, Africa should not find itself in Washington making the same argument for another temporary extension. It should be negotiating from stronger industries, deeper regional markets and a clearer proposition about the economic partnership it wants with the US.