The tariffs are no longer hypothetical. As of May 2026, eighteen African countries face a 15 per cent levy on goods entering the United States. Thirty-two more face 10 per cent. Algeria, Libya and South Africa are at 30. Tunisia is at 25. The most-cited African casualty, Madagascar, briefly faced a 47 per cent reciprocal rate before partial reprieves were negotiated. The structure that has shaped African export thinking for a generation — the African Growth and Opportunity Act — is now a one-year stay of execution, signed by President Donald Trump on February 2, 2026, valid only until the end of the year.
Africa’s response has been a curious mixture of denial, hedging and lobbying. Denial, because policy elites in many capitals still talk as though AGOA’s renewal is a matter of when, not if. Hedging, because individual countries are quietly cutting bilateral deals — South Africa is dangling critical minerals access, Kenya is reactivating a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, Côte d’Ivoire is offering cocoa-supply guarantees. Lobbying, because the African ambassadors in Washington have organised a coordinated effort, drawing on retired US officials and friendly Republican senators, to push for a long-term AGOA extension.
This is not a strategy. It is a series of tactics in search of a strategy. And the central reason it is not a strategy is that the Trump administration is not negotiating an AGOA-style preferential arrangement at all. It is negotiating a tariff regime, in which every concession from Washington must be matched by a reciprocal concession from the African partner. That is a fundamentally different framework. AGOA was a development tool, premised on the idea that opening the US market to African manufacturers would catalyse industrialisation in poor countries. The Trump regime is a transactional regime, premised on the idea that every favour costs something. The two are not compatible.
The economic damage is already measurable. Lesotho’s textile sector — which built itself almost entirely on AGOA-eligible apparel exports to the United States — has begun retrenching. Kenya’s apparel manufacturers, who employ roughly 65,000 workers in EPZ zones, have warned that the 15 per cent levy will erase their margin against Bangladeshi and Vietnamese competitors who already enjoy cheaper labour. Madagascar’s vanilla and apparel sectors are in distress. South Africa’s vehicle exports face a competitiveness shock at exactly the moment the GNU government can least afford an industrial-job loss.
The strategic damage is bigger than the economic damage. For two decades, Africa-US relations were structured around an implicit bargain: the US offered preferential market access; African countries offered geopolitical alignment, votes at the UN General Assembly, and basing rights. That bargain is being unbundled. The US wants the alignment and the basing rights but is no longer willing to subsidise the African end of the deal. Trump’s first-term and now second-term Africa policy has consistently treated the continent as a transactional space rather than a strategic one, except where critical minerals and counter-China leverage are concerned.
Here is the question Kenyan policymakers have not seriously answered. In a tariff world, what does the comparative advantage of producing textiles in Athi River or services in Tatu City look like, and what is the realistic counter-move? There are three honest options. The first is reciprocity — Kenya offers the US preferential access to its own market in critical sectors in exchange for AGOA-equivalent terms. This is the route Nairobi has been quietly exploring through the Trade and Investment Framework, but it requires giving up the policy space that the East African Community’s Common External Tariff has protected. The second is pivot — accept that the US market is closing and aggressively re-route exports to the EU under the Economic Partnership Agreement, to China under FOCAC arrangements, and into the AfCFTA. The third is patience — wait Trump out and hope that a more conventional administration restores AGOA in 2029.
The first option is plausible but politically unpopular. The second is technically right but underpriced by Kenyan exporters. The third is wishful thinking.
The continental conversation needs to grow up. The African Union’s response to the tariff regime has been to issue communiqués calling for “balanced and reciprocal trade.” That is the diplomatic equivalent of shrugging. A serious response would involve a coordinated continental tariff negotiation with Washington, mandated by the AU’s Heads of State and led by the Trade Commissioner with technical support from UNECA. It would also involve fast-tracking the AfCFTA implementation — particularly the Protocol on Investment and the rules of origin — so that African manufacturers actually have a deep, integrated continental market to fall back on. So far, neither has happened with anything like the urgency required.
For Kenya, the smart play is to stop assuming AGOA returns. Plan, in the budget cycle starting July 2026, for an economy in which the US is a normal trade partner under standard tariffs, China is the dominant infrastructure financier, and the EU is the preferred destination for value-added agricultural exports. That is the world we are now in.
What to watch next: the November US elections to Congress, which will determine whether any long-term AGOA extension has political space; the African Union’s Mid-Year Coordination Meeting and whether it produces a coordinated tariff response; and South Africa’s ongoing Section 232 critical-minerals negotiations with Washington, which will set the template for the rest of the continent.
