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Kenya: Match Words With Deeds, Urges Uhuru
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The Nation (Nairobi)
17 July 2008
Posted to the web 16 July 2008
Kevin J Kelley
Washington, DC
Frustration outweighed gratitude in Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta's summary report to the Agoa Forum in Washington on Tuesday.
Mr Kenyatta was speaking at the State Department on behalf of the African trade ministers attending a three-day conference on the status of the US preferential trade programme known as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
He gave the presentation in his capacity as the top representative of Kenya, which as the new chair of the Agoa Forum will be hosting next year's conference in Nairobi.
Mr Kenyatta told an audience of about 300 US and African diplomats and trade officials that the time has come for "a lot of good words that we hear to be turned into good deeds."
He said the African ministers expressed the sense that "we may have over-wooed our partner without getting a commensurate return from our partner, the United States of America."
The deputy prime minister, who also serves as Kenya's trade minister, acknowledged Agoa's importance to Africa and thanked the US for lifting duties and quotas on most African exports through the programme.
But he noted that American private investment in Africa "remains very low" seven years after Agoa's inception even though Africa offers "a return on investment far greater than any region in the world."
Listing recommendations agreed upon by the African ministerial group in a meeting on Monday, Mr Kenyatta urged the US government to encourage American companies "to see Africa in a new light."
Agoa, which is due to expire in 2015, should also be made "permanent and predictable" as a means of promoting greater American investment, Mr Kenyatta said on behalf of the ministers.
He also called for the US to open its markets more broadly to African agricultural markets by easing sanitary and phytosanitary standards that he described as "rigid."
Specific benchmarks measuring Agoa's contributions to Africa's development should be set and progress toward them should be reviewed at the annual forums, Mr Kenyatta added.
He further asked the United States to provide "substantial additional and predictable resources" in order to build Africa's trade capacity and to help improve the continent's infrastructure.
Speaking earlier on Tuesday at the State Department event, US Assistant Trade Representative for Africa Florie Lisser acknowledged that Agoa's potential "has yet to be fully tapped."
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She noted, however, that the United States has provided $1.6 billion to boost Africa's trade capacity in the past seven years.
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