The AGOA as Stepping Stone for US-Africa Free Trade Agreements

The purpose of this paper is to show how the pattern of trade relations between the United States and African countries is gradually moving from unilateralism towards reciprocity. It therefore demonstrates that the AGOA was conceived to be a building block toward future bilateral trade agreements. Although it was designed as a preferential trade arrangement, AGOA was intended to evolve into reciprocal trade agreements. This is what the U.S. started doing prior to the entry into force of the AGOA, by entering into Trade and Investment Framework Agreements with individual countries or blocs. It also transpires that the deployment comes as a response to the European Union which is already engaged in the redefinition of its own trade relations with Africa since 2004. This article is important in many respects. Not only it is a study of the U.S practice as preference-granting country, but it is also interested in the typology of trade agreements concluded by the U.S. in other regions of the world. This is important in order to indicate and analyze the types of provisions African countries should be expected to face when the time of entering into reciprocal binding trade treaties arrives