The US Senate voted 90-6 on August 8 to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) through December 31, 2028, folding the trade preference programme into a broader government funding bill and easing months of uncertainty for apparel and textile exporters across sub-Saharan Africa.
AGOA, in place for 25 years, grants 32 eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the US market for more than 1,800 product lines, on top of roughly 5,000 items already covered under the Generalized System of Preferences. Apparel and footwear manufacturers have been among the programme’s largest beneficiaries, particularly in Lesotho, Kenya, Madagascar and South Africa, where garment exports built on AGOA preferences support hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The extension follows a turbulent stretch for the programme. AGOA lapsed on September 30, 2025, before Congress passed a retroactive one-year fix in February 2026 that pushed the deadline only to the end of this year. The Senate-passed measure now sets a longer runway to 2028, though the bill must still clear the House of Representatives before heading to President Donald Trump for signature.
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Senator Raphael Warnock, who backed the extension, said the move would lower consumer costs and support the economic stability of US trading partners. The legislation also renews two parallel preference programmes for Haiti — the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) and the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership and Encouragement (HOPE) Act.
For Lesotho, whose textile sector has weathered acute uncertainty over AGOA’s status, the extension preserves a critical export channel to the world’s largest consumer market.
In South Africa, where trade with the US reached roughly $15 billion in 2024 and the country ran a trade surplus of about $1 billion, the extension arrives despite continued diplomatic friction between Washington and Pretoria over foreign policy issues including South Africa’s stance on Russia, China, Iran and its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Industry observers note the extension provides only a time buffer rather than a permanent fix, with AGOA’s benefits remaining conditional on US assessments of beneficiary countries’ trade and political conduct — a review process that has periodically suspended individual nations from the programme.