President Uhuru Kenyatta will be visiting Washington next week where he will begin talks of an ongoing bilateral trade agreement. If things go as planned, this will be the first such deal between the world’s biggest economy and a sub-Saharan African nation. The pact will bring major benefits to Kenya’s economy and enhance the nation’s political standing in Africa and beyond. Kyle McCarter, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, sees the talks as a “win-win” for the two countries.
Before now, White House officials have indicated interests in forging bilateral trade deals with sub-Saharan countries as successor arrangements to the multilateral African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) programme due to expire in 2025. The plan is to take on a single sub-Saharan nation that would serve as a model for other individual trade pacts in the region.
Kenya currently ranks as the US’s sixth-biggest trade partner in the continent, with total exchanges of goods and services between both countries reaching nearly $1.2 billion in 2018. While many expected South Africa to have been the United State’s choice for a bilateral agreement because of its sophisticated economy, the country is currently trying to keep its place in the Generalized System of Preferences, America’s largest program for the world’s ‘poorest’ nations. According to Bloomberg, the disagreement is another sign that policy paralysis is causing South Africa to slip down the rankings when world powers look for African partners.
