African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)

AGOA is a piece of legislation, approved by the U.S. Congress in May 2000. The purpose is to assist the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and improve economic relations with USA. It provides trade preferences for quota and duty-free entry into the USA for certain goods. 

Exporter benefits

Main benefits for the Ghanaian exporters include:

• Existing FDI-infused export producers in Ghana provide the shortest fuse to tangible results in terms of accelerating Ghana’s exports of Non-Traditional products to the US
  markets
• National AGOA Strategy builds on the existing NES and its broader development policy framework
• Duty free preferences
• Food safety trainings

The AGOA/GSP program

Duty-free access to the U.S. market under the combined AGOA/GSP program stands at approximately 6,500 product tariff lines, including the tariff lines that were added by the AGOA legislation. Notably, these newly added “AGOA products” include items such as apparel and footwear, wine, certain motor vehicle components, a variety of agricultural products, chemicals, steel and many others.

Their intention was to set requirements for local textile fabric sourcing where it was considered that sufficient quantities were available in AGOA-eligible countries; third country fabric (the provisions related only to denim initially) would thus first have to be sourced locally or regionally before third country imports could be utilised for onward exports of denim garments.