Africa-Press – Namibia. NAMIBIA plans to export cosmetics, grapes and dates to the American market through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).
This agreement allows African countries duty-free access to the United States market for over 1 800 products.
“We have managed to export our meat, beer and charcoal. We are focusing on the second phase of the strategy that looks at hand-made products and to export cosmetics, grapes and dates,” said trade minister Lucia Iipumbu on Tuesday.
Iipumbu said in 2019, during the previous Agoa summit, Namibia was identified as one of the countries that did not have an implementation strategy to capitalise on the agreement.
“We came back home in 2020 and worked on our strategy and implementation plan, which we rolled out since then.”
Some of the companies who have benefited through Agoa are the Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco) and Namibia Breweries Limited.
Currently, Namibia is still the only African country eligible to export beef to the US.
To do this, Iipumbu said, all African trade ministers are pushing for a 10-year extension on the trade agreement between the continent’s nations and the US, which allows for access to this Western market.
Agoa was enacted in 2000 and is supposed to run until 2025.
Iipumbu told The Namibian on Tuesday that African nations and the US government have in principle agreed to extend Agoa for another 10 years.
“We were looking at the possibility of us extending the current act, which is supposed to end by 2025,” she said, adding that all parties are in agreement with the 10-year extension from 2025 to 2035.
The final word on the extension will only be announced next year when the parties to the agreement meet in South Africa for their forum engagement.
“We also looked at the scope currently, mostly focusing on the trade of goods and services that we want to expand into the investment that would bring in foreign direct investment.”
She said this is in response to Africa’s industrialisation agenda.
“Which is at the centre of our next level of discussions under the umbrella of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, capacity building and building value chains. This will assist us to produce more goods to infuse into this market,” she said.
Iipumbu is attending the US-Africa Leaders Summit, which kicked off on Tuesday and ends today.
She attended this session with US members of congress, officials from the African Union, AfCFTA Secretariat, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Development Bank, regional economic communities, Africa’s diplomatic corps, and the chair of the Trade Advisory Committee on Africa.
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