World
US, Africa to Strengthen Trade Through AGOA, Private Sector Collaboration
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
With over 1300 delegates at the US-African Business Summit held in mid-July in Gaborone, Botswana, the main focus was on mapping out strategies to strengthen trade and economic relations between the United States and Africa. Most speakers emphasized reviewing and widening collaboration between governments, while others underlined the importance of the private sector as the key driver in achieving robust economic growth in African countries.
African leaders, corporate business executives, and most participants called for an extension of the Africa Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA), which grants African countries the freedom to export products tax-free into the American market. It is the traditional market from where most of them earn revenues for their national budget.
Renewing the African Growth and Opportunity Act AGOA immediately would remove uncertainty about the pact’s future and allow for suppliers and partners to plan better and maintain investments in African economies, ministers said during discussions in Botswana.
Chairman of the Board of Directors for the US Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), Dr Jeffrey L. Sturchio, underlined the importance of collaboration between governments and private sectors, describing partnerships as a vital ingredient for achieving robust trade and economic targets during the previous years.
The Corporate Council on Africa organized the mid-July summit as a follow-up to the December 2022 US-African Leaders Summit in Washington under the patronage of President Joe Biden, where the White House and the United States offered $55 billion for tackling various development projects across Africa.
African leaders urged renewal of the long-standing Africa Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA), which gives some African countries preferential or even tax-free access to the US for their exports. The agreement is due to expire in 2025, and African delegates at the summit want the deal renewed without much delay. As already known, AGOA has been credited with creating employment in Africa and bolstering exports to the United States.
“It is also our earnest hope that in consonance with the letter and spirit of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the Biden administration will renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act initiative, which expires in 2025,” Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, addressing delegates gathered in Gaborone. “The AGOA renewal now, with expanded mandates, will give a strong signal and confidence to the markets and serve as a catalyst for Africa’s industrialization and inclusion into the global value chains.”
Florie Liser, chief executive and president of the Corporate Council on Africa, which organizes the U.S.-Africa Business Summit, said there is a need to examine AGOA in light of the newly established African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). And United States is exploring opportunities that the African single market offers.
A lot has changed in Africa and beyond since AGOA came into practical operation more than two decades. Florie Liser pointed out that “the advent of the African Continental Free Trade Area is fostering much closer economic and commercial integration on the continent, which will spur the creation of regional and continental value chains and increase value-added across key sectors. In many ways, the question is how best we can support this development.”
The Atlantic Council Africa Center produced a report titled – The Future of U.S.-Africa Trade and Investment, which analyzes the future of the AGOA. The report was issued at the summit.
Frannie Leautier, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the report’s lead author,, explained that the idea of extending or renewing AGOA is to realize the potential of AGOA for long-term development through greater certainty, planning and skilled up support for capacity development and investment flow.
The first recommendation is straightforward: just extend it. The second one is to provide longer-term certainty about AGOA eligibility because investors are waiting for that.
He said the act “should be renewed by the US Congress for at least a ten-year period as soon as possible.” There was also a call by ministers for the AGOA rules to be streamlined and made less cumbersome in order for more countries to be able to benefit from the program.
“There is a compelling case to reauthorize the AGOA,” wrote Daniel F. Runde and Thomas Bryja for the Washington DC-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in a new paper on calling for AGOA to be renewed.
According to reports, not all African countries benefit from AGOA. Some, like Ethiopia, Mali and Guinea, were barred because of coups and human rights violations. These African countries were not invited to the Washington December gathering. South Africa’s eligibility is being reviewed over the alleged sale of arms to Russia.
South Africa has been the biggest beneficiary of the 23-year-old AGOA act in monetary terms, largely thanks to the car sector. The South African media has also reported that President Cyril Ramaphosa sent senior members of his cabinet to Washington to discuss the future of AGOA.
Scott Nathan, chief executive of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, who is leading the U.S. government delegation at the summit, pledged continued support for Africa. “The United States is focused on what we will do with African nations and people, and not for African nations and people. We work to deepen and understand our partnership, amplify African voices and support the empowerment of Africans,” according to Scott Nathan.
Zambia’s trade and commerce minister, Chipoka Mulenga, said his country had benefited from the trade agreement but remained “at the bottom of the benefits of the AGOA platform” due to a lack of the industrialization needed to produce more “value-added products” rather than merely exporting raw materials such as minerals or agricultural produce.
If the U.S. government want to see AGOA succeed in Africa, it must support African countries to industrialize to give value addition. Mokhethi Shilele, trade minister from Lesotho, cautioned against a complete revamp of AGOA for fear of delaying the act’s renewal. “There is a sentiment that AGOA should be reformed or changed, but I’m indifferent to that because if we push for that, how are we going to get it renewed this year?”
Atlantic Council views an interconnection between the AGOA and the new African Continental Free Trade. For the future of US-Africa trade and investment, policymakers in the US and Africa must decide the basis for stronger US-Africa trade going forward. With the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) set to expire in 2025, the U.S. has an opportunity to update its economic offer for Africa.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Despite geopolitical complexities, tensions and pressure, Russia’s military arms and weaponry sales earned approximately $15 billion at the closure of 2025, according to Kremlin report. At the regular session, chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Jan. 30, the Commission on Military and Technical Cooperation with Foreign Countries analyzed the results of its work for 2025, and defined plans for the future.
It was noted that the system of military-technical cooperation continued to operate in difficult conditions, and with increased pressure from the Western countries to block business relations with Russia. The meeting, however, admitted that export contracts have generally performed sustainably. Russian military products were exported to more than 30 countries last year, and the amount of foreign exchange exceeded $15 billion.
Such results provide an additional opportunity to direct funds to the modernization of OPC enterprises, to the expansion of their production capacities, and to advanced research. It is also important that at these enterprises a significant volume of products is civilian products.
The Russian system of military-technical cooperation has not only demonstrated effectiveness and high resilience, but has created fundamental structures, which allow to significantly expand the “geography” of supplies of products of military purpose and, thus strengthen the position of Russia’s leader and employer advanced weapons systems – proven, tested in real combat conditions.
Thanks to the employees of the Federal Service for Military Technical Cooperation and Rosoboronexport, the staff of OPC enterprises for their good faith. Within the framework of the new federal project “Development of military-technical cooperation of Russia with foreign countries” for the period 2026-2028, additional measures of support are introduced. Further effective use of existing financial and other support mechanisms and instruments is extremely important because the volumes of military exports in accordance with the 2026 plan.
Special attention would be paid to the expansion of military-technological cooperation and partnerships, with 14 states already implementing or in development more than 340 such projects.
Future plans will allow to improve the characteristics of existing weapons and equipment and to develop new promising models, including those in demand on global markets, among other issues – the development of strategic areas of military-technical cooperation, and above all, with partners on the CIS and the CSTO. This is one of the priority tasks to strengthen both bilateral and multilateral relations, ensuring stability and security in Eurasia.
From January 2026, Russia chairs the CSTO, and this requires working systematically with partners, including comprehensive approaches to expanding military-technical relations. New prospects open up for deepening military-technical cooperation and with countries in other regions, including with states on the African continent. Russia has been historically strong and trusting relationships with African countries. In different years even the USSR, and then Russia supplied African countries with a significant amount of weapons and military equipment, trained specialists on their production, operation, repair, as well as military personnel.
Today, despite pressure from the West, African partners express readiness to expand relations with Russia in the military and military-technical fields. It is not only about increasing supplies of Russian military exports, but also about the purchase of other weapons, other materials and products. Russia has undertaken comprehensive maintenance of previously delivered equipment, organization of licensed production of Russian military products and some other important issues. In general, African countries are sufficient for consideration today.
By Adedapo Adesanya
President Donald Trump has named Mr Kevin Warsh as the successor to Mr Jerome Powell as the Federal Reserve chair, ending a prolonged odyssey that has seen unprecedented turmoil around the central bank.
The decision culminates a process that officially began last summer but started much earlier than that, with President Trump launching a criticism against the Powell-led US central bank almost since he took the job in 2018.
“I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best,” Mr Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the selection.
US analysts noted that the 55-year old appear not to ripple market because of his previous experience at the apex bank as Governor, with others saying he wouldn’t always do the bidding of the American president.
If approved by the US Senate, Mr Warsh will take over the position in May, when Mr Powell’s term expires.
Despite having argued for reductions recently, “Warsh has a long hawkish history that markets have not forgotten,” one analyst told Bloomberg.
President Trump has castigated Mr Powell for not lowering interest rates more quickly. His administration also launched a criminal investigation of Powell and the Federal Reserve earlier this month, which led Mr Powell to issue an extraordinary rebuke of President Trump’s efforts to politicize the independent central bank.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Donald Trump has been leading the United States as its president since January 2025. Washington’s priority is to Make America Great Again (MAGA). Trump’s tariffs have rippled many economies from Latin America through Asian region to the continent of Africa. Trump’s Davos speech has explicitly revealed building a ‘new world order’ based on dominance rather than trust. He has also initiated whirlwind steps to annex Greenland, while further created the Board of Peace, aimed at helping end the two-year war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and to oversee reconstruction. Trump is handling the three-year old Russia-Ukraine crisis, and other deep-seated religious and ethnic conflicts in Africa.
These emerging trends, at least in a considerable short term, are influencing BRICS which has increased its geopolitical importance, and focusing on uniting the countries in the Global East and Global South. From historical records, BRICS, described as non-western organization, and is loosing its coherence primarily due to differences in geopolitical interests and multinational alignments, and of course, a number of members face threats from the United States while there are variations of approach to the emerging worldwide perceptions.
In this conversation, deputy director of the Center for African Studies at Moscow’s National Research University High School of Economics (HSE), Vsevolod Sviridov, expresses his opinions focusing on BRICS agenda under India’s presidency, South Africa’s G20 chairmanship in 2024, and genegrally putting Africa’s development priorities within the context of emerging trends. Here are the interview excerpts:
What is the likely impact of Washington’s geopolitics and its foreign policy on BRICS?
From my perspective, the current Venezuela-U.S. confrontation, especially Washington’s tightened leverage over Venezuelan oil revenue flows and the knock-on effects for Chinese interests, will be read inside BRICS as a reminder that sovereign resources can still be constrained by financial chokepoints and sanctions politics. This does not automatically translate into BRICS taking Venezuela’s side, but it does strengthen the bloc’s long-running argument for more resilient South-South trade settlement, diversified energy chains, and financing instruments that reduce exposure to coercive measures, because many African and other developing economies face similar vulnerabilities around commodities, shipping, insurance, and correspondent banking. At the same time, BRICS’ expansion makes consensus harder: several members maintain significant ties with the U.S., so the most likely impact is a technocratic push rather than a loud political campaign.
And highlighting, specifically, the position of BRICS members (South Africa, Ethiopia and Egypt, as well as its partnering African States (Nigeria and Uganda)?
Venezuela crisis urges African members to demand that BRICS deliver usable financial and trade tools. For South Africa, Ethiopia, and Egypt, the Venezuela case is more about the precedent: how quickly external pressure can reshape a country’s fiscal room, debt dynamics, and even investor perceptions when energy revenues and sanctions compliance collide. South Africa will likely argue that BRICS should prioritize investment, industrialization, and trade facilitation. Ethiopia and Egypt, both debt-sensitive and searching for FDI, will be especially attentive to anything that helps de-risk financing, while avoiding steps that could trigger secondary-sanctions anxieties or scare off diversified investors.
Would the latest geopolitical developments ultimately shape the agenda for BRICS 2026 under India’s presidency?
India’s 2026 chairmanship is already framed around “Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,” and Venezuela’s shock (paired with broader sanction/market-volatility lessons) will likely sharpen the resilience part. From an African perspective, that is an opportunity: South Africa, Ethiopia, and Egypt can press India to translate the theme into deliverables that matter on the ground: food and fertilizer stability, affordable energy access, infrastructure funding. India, in turn, has incentives to keep BRICS focused on economic problem-solving rather than becoming hostage to any single flashpoint. So the Venezuela episode may function as a cautionary case study that accelerates practical cooperation where African members have the most to gain. And I would add: the BRICS agenda will become increasingly Africa-centered simply because Africa’s weight globally is rising, and recent summit discussions have repeatedly highlighted African participation as a core Global South vector. South Africa’s G20 chairmanship last year explicitly framed around putting Africa’s development priorities high on the agenda, further proves this point.
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