AGOA, the Lobito corridor, and the future of US-Africa engagement

The United States under President Donald Trump has said that it is shifting its engagement with the African continent to a policy his administration calls “trade, not aid.” And while the “not aid” part of this is clear — the U.S. Agency for International Development has been dismantled, after all — how exactly the “trade” part will work is murkier. The U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation, a development agency which provided large-scale grants to support economic growth and reduce poverty, has been gutted; tariffs are mounting globally; and the U.S.’s flagship Africa trade policy — the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA, which offers duty-free, quota-free access for eligible exporters — is set to expire next month, with little sign of renewal. The impacts are already visible: the most recent data shows U.S.-Africa trade dropping sharply, making the reality look more like neither trade nor aid. At the same time, China made a striking move, announcing it would offer zero-tariff access across all tariff lines to the 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic ties (excluding Eswatini). This sweeping expansion vastly outpaces previous limits, positioning China as a strategic trade partner just when U.S. preferences look fragile. So what does the future of U.S. engagement with Africa really look like — and what could or should it look like? That was the focus of a recent Devex Pro Briefing with Enoh Ebong, former head of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency; Aubrey Hruby, senior adviser at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center; and Bright Simons, president of mPedigree. Over the course of the conversation, the panelists painted a bleak picture for AGOA’s renewal, dissected its flaws over the past 25 years, examined whether the Lobito Corridor can serve as a model for U.S. engagement, and explored what both Washington and African governments could do to recalibrate their strategies. The future of AGOA? Since its inception in 2000, AGOA has underpinned African exports in apparel — notably from Lesotho, Kenya, and Ethiopia — as well as oil from Angola and Nigeria, and vehicles from South Africa. South Africa alone has often accounted for more than half of AGOA export volume. The program is set to expire next month and will go before Congress for a renewal vote. Ebong offered a blunt assessment: “It’s not looking good from where I sit.” Hruby pointed out that when AGOA came into effect, African countries were granted duty-free, quota-free access to the U.S. market. “Now, what we did learn after 25 years of AGOA is that many countries, outside of a few success stories, have struggled to find meaningful exports because the industrial base for manufacturing is quite small on the continent,” she said. The utilization numbers back that up. While Kenya and Lesotho used the program heavily — 88% and 99% of their exports to the U.S., respectively, qualified through it in 2023 — but almost half of all beneficiary countries recorded rates of just 2% over that period, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. The conversation about AGOA is also shaped by this administration’s wider approach to trade. As Hruby and others noted, it is not just AGOA that the Trump administration appears to dislike — it’s the underlying concept of tariff-free trade agreements. That puts African countries under greater pressure to work together in the face of U.S. tariffs. Simons said African countries are generally too weak to secure carve-outs from Trump-era tariffs on their own — no single African nation has managed it so far. He argued that they need to form smaller, more agile coalitions of states with overlapping interests to negotiate collectively, rather than relying solely on the African Union. Lobito as a model? The Lobito corridor — a rail and road network linking mineral-rich regions of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola’s Atlantic coast that was a flagship project of the Biden administration that is now partially operational — is being held up by the Trump administration as a potential model for future U.S.-Africa economic engagement. Hruby noted that while corridor projects in Africa are nothing new, Lobito benefited from key advantages: existing rail infrastructure, a strong anchor in the mining sector, and crucial early-stage project development provided by the African Finance Corporation, a multilateral finance institution designed to encourage private sector-led infrastructure investment across Africa. That groundwork made it possible for U.S. agencies such as the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to step in later with political risk insurance and debt financing. She suggested these ingredients could be replicated in other contexts, such as the Congo-Rwanda agreement on minerals, if the same infrastructure-first approach is applied. Ebong pointed to Lobito’s unusually broad coalition — involving the Group of Seven major economies, African Development Bank, African Finance Corporation, and other regional financiers, as well as partners from Europe and beyond — as a reason it succeeded. The project, she said, reflects an understanding that “the U.S. isn’t there to do it alone, that others will contribute, including finances on the ground,” a principle she believes should be carried forward as a model for future ventures. For Simons, Lobito is proof that when U.S. strategic interests are clear, Washington will use any instrument at its disposal — including multilateral and multi-stakeholder approaches it might otherwise avoid — to get the deal done. What happens next? On the U.S. side, Hruby highlighted a recent change at the Export-Import Bank that could open new channels for investment in African mining. Under its supply-chain resilience initiative, the bank can now finance mining projects in Africa if the output is destined for U.S. buyers — a significant shift from its traditional role of financing U.S. exports. While narrow in scope and focused on critical minerals, she said it represents a “window” for new types of transactions, backed by leadership that knows Africa well. She also noted that the administration has floated the idea of setting a single Africa-wide tariff rate, potentially one of the lower rates in the U.S. system. That approach could avoid the complexity of negotiating separate rates for individual countries, though it would fall short of the duty-free, quota-free access AGOA currently provides. From the African side, Simons stressed the need for better policy infrastructure within Africa itself. He called for the creation of observatories to model the effects of tariffs and other trade measures on specific sectors and regional value chains, as well as stronger connections between African think tanks, advocacy groups, trade unions, and the diaspora. “The preparatory work, the thinking, has to happen on the Africa side in order to take advantage of the moment,” he said.