African Growth and Opportunity Act

March 22, 2021

As part of its 2021 Annual Meeting (March 24-26), the American Society of International Law invites our members and colleagues from around the world to participate in a special series of sessions focusing on regional issues of international law and policy that will be affected by the new Biden-Harris Administration.

Should the Kenya-United States Free Trade Agreement be concluded, it would violate Article 37 of the Protocol on the Establishment of the East African Customs Union. Article 37 requires a Partner State to notify the EAC of a new trade agreement even when there is merely a proposed trade agreement. Article 37 of the Protocol requires that Partner States notify the other Partner States before offering a third-party preferential market access since Partner States share a common Customs territory.

A focus on the ongoing Kenya-U.S trade negotiations is pertinent as a lens to rethink the trade and investment treaty making reform at the continental level in the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area (“AfCFTA”) (section 3). The authors conclude with concrete suggestions aiming to improve the drafting of the prospective Kenya-U.S FTA provisions.

The AfCFTA seeks to change the manner in which African states trade with each other. The existence of the AfCFTA is what Roscoe Pound termed using the law as a tool of social engineering. The African Union in creating the AfCFTA intended to promote, facilitate and eventually experience free intra-African trade. This review appreciates the AfCFTA but seeks to criticize a loophole it has created

The AfCFTA will continue to face a number of risks that threaten to impede continental integration in favour of fragmentation. Of interest to this post are bilateral trade agreements between African countries, individually or in smaller groups, on the one hand, and non-African countries or regions, on the other.

Welcome to Afronomicslaw.org, a blog on the international economic law landscape as it relates to Africa. A major goal of this blog is to complement current analysis of international economic law issues as they relate to Africa in the blogosphere. We believe that this blog is particularly timely because there are significant international economic law developments taking place in Africa that invite more contemporaneous reflection and discussion.