AGOA’s expiry as a neo-colonial rupture: Tariffs, critical minerals and the right to development sovereignty in Africa

Abstract

The expiry of the non-reciprocal African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) on 30 September 2025 marked the end of 25 years of preferential trade relations between the United States (US) and Africa. This paper contends that AGOA institutionalised a neocolonial dependency by using conditional market access in ways that subordinated African development priorities to US political and security interests. Although its lapse, combined with the unilateral imposition of reciprocal US tariffs, caused a significant economic rupture, it did not translate into African economic sovereignty. Instead, it exposed Africa’s deep entanglement within an international economic system governed by multilateral trade rules, sovereign debt discipline, investment arbitration and private capital. The subsequent political effort to restore AGOA reflects a broader shift towards a securitised and transactional US trade policy in which market access is used as a bargaining tool for securing strategic minerals and advancing geopolitical objectives. Within this context, this analysis engages the ‘dilemma of Pan-Africanism’: the tension between immediate national priorities and long-term continental agency. Past failures are treated not as grounds for retreat, but as a basis for strategic caution. Against this backdrop, the paper presents a deliberately limited and conditional argument that Africa’s bargaining power lies in its endowment of critical minerals. However, translating this advantage into developmental gains requires disciplined continental coordination and robust legal frameworks. Accordingly, the paper proposes a three-pillar strategy grounded in the Right to Development: (1) reciprocal mineral-technology arrangements; (2) operationalising the African Green Minerals Strategy; and (3) the expansion of regional value chains under the African Continental Free Trade Area.