Nigeria Is Not Benefiting From AGOA–U.S

Tayo Olanipekun

Petroleum is Nigeria’s main export to the US and it does not create jobs nor make the country derive benefits from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which facilitates trade with the world’s largest economy, the U.S Department of State has said.

Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs, Tibor Nagy and the Assistant Trade Representative for Africa, Constance Hamilton, made this known in a press conference on Tuesday, saying Nigeria has not taken advantage of the benefits AGOA  offers.

“Nigeria has not taken advantage of AGOA because they send us mainly oil,” said Hamilton.  “And oil doesn’t really create the kind of jobs or other benefits from trade that I think that countries are looking for.”

She said the efforts by the new government in Nigeria in trying to expand and go beyond just petroleum production and get into other things “is a question for what Nigeria wants to see happen.”

However, Nigerian exports of crude and petroleum products to the United States plunged from 36.4 million barrels in July 2010 to just 5.6 million barrels in January 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Petroleum products have also continued to account for the largest portion of all AGOA exports to the US, with a 67 per cent share, while the volume of AGOA trade remains modest.

In the AGOA clothing sector, for example, US gets about $1 billion per year from Africa, roughly one per cent of its $95 billion imports in global clothing imports.

AGOA, a key component of US-Africa strategy instituted in 2000 to encourage exportation from Africa to the US, is scheduled to expire in 2025.

According to Hamilton, there are other trade opportunities for Africa’s largest economy, being a part of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which is always talking about the liberalization of trade barriers and removing barriers to trade and investment.

These, she said, “are opportunities to open up the Nigerian market in many, many ways, not just for the United States and other partners outside of Africa, but also within the region.”

Hamilton said it is impossible for her country to go in and make “this change within the Nigerian structure” but that the Nigerian government should ask the question of to take better advantage of the opportunities that AGOA presents.

“We have opened the door; we’ve got the trade hubs there to provide assistance to individual entrepreneurs, but it’s up to the government to create the conditions and to provide its business people with what they need to access this market. We’ve been saying that over and over again. It’s up to the countries to figure out how to take advantage of this important preference program,” said Hamilton.