Not virtuous enough, Mali, Guinea and Ethiopia are no longer considered privileged trade partners of Washington

There is no denial of being a privileged trade partner of the United States, especially for a developing country. Under the aegis of President Clinton, the African Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA) was created in May 2000. This law allows countries in sub-Saharan Africa to export to the United States duty-free. “The program can create important opportunities for recipient countries and fundamentally change the structure of recipient economies”, announces AGOA.

Thus, according to figures provided by the US Treasury in 2018, bilateral merchandise trade between sub-Saharan Africa and the United States reached $ 39 billion in 2017, accelerated by AGOA. The main US imports are oil for 11.2 billion dollars followed by precious metals for 4.1 billion and cocoa in third place for 1.2 billion.

Unsurprisingly, the main beneficiaries are also the main exporting countries of these products: Nigeria and Angola for oil, South Africa for precious metals and Côte d’Ivoire for cocoa. To this must also be added a significant American investment. The conditions for a country to benefit from it are to improve the rule of law, guarantee human rights and respect fundamental labor standards.

Washington likes to hand out good and bad points and does not hesitate to sanction countries whose policies are contrary to the AGOA charter. Thus, Guinea and Mali, both now ruled by a military junta, have just been excluded due to “the absence of pluralism and the absence of the rule of law”. For Ethiopia, it is the repression of the rebellion in Tigray that justifies the sidelining, despite the presence of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

As the list of AGOA beneficiaries is reviewed each year, the exclusion of these countries will be effective on January 1, 2022. The importance of the “punishment” is very relative, and can only be measured in terms of relationships. trade between the country concerned and the United States. It is not certain that this is enough to convince the leaders of the three targeted countries to return to the right path.