In spite of objections from smallholder farmers, Kenya‘s administration under President William Ruto has started the negotiation phase of the planned bilateral agreement with the United States that would replace the more than twenty-year-old African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
The conceptual discussions took place in Washington between February 6 and 10, and the four-day negotiations in Nairobi began on Monday.
The US Trade Representative’s Assistant for Africa, Constance Hamilton, and President Ruto’s negotiating team are discussing the proposed US-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP), which has 11 pillars.
Agriculture trade facilitation, encouraging consumer, business, and worker trust in the digital economy, environmental protection, integrating micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) into international trade, and preventing and combating corruption are some of the areas of attention.
The US equivalent had hosted a similar event, but the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum protested to the Trade Ministry about the lack of stakeholder participation prior to the discussions.
“The government has not shared with farmers or any other stakeholders the negotiating texts proposed by either Kenya or the US. We do not understand why the texts cannot be shared,” said the lobby in a statement.
“There is a need to demystify the issues at play to enable farmers to understand what is at stake.”
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) office sought public views on the proposed deal with Kenya between August and September last year.
The Biden administration has made it clear that negotiations with partners, which include Kenya, will include “provisions intended to eliminate or reduce non-tariff barriers that can hamper market access for US agricultural products”.
“The administration will seek to include in these agreements enforceable provisions that build on WTO (World Trade Organisation) obligations, including provisions to ensure that sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures are science-based, developed through transparent, predictable processes, and implemented in a nondiscriminatory manner,” the USTR wrote in the 2023 Trade Policy to the Congress on March 1.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai last month said that the Biden administration will “aim to make rapid progress” in negotiations with Kenya in 2023.
“The Biden administration views this approach as one to be built upon to include other areas of mutual interest and to serve as a model for engagement with other willing countries on the African continent,” Ms Tai wrote in the report to the US lawmakers.
Trade between the two nations is skewed in favor of the US, which imported goods worth Ksh76 billion ($563 million) from Kenya and exported goods worth Ksh93.43 billion ($692 million) last year.
Under the Agoa deal, Kenya mostly exports clothing while receiving pharmaceuticals and airplane parts from the greatest economy in the world.
The existing Agoa agreement, a preferential trade scheme that gives sub-Saharan African nations duty- and quota-free access to the US market, will expire in September 2025.
Negotiations for the potential bilateral agreement really got underway when former president Uhuru Kenyatta visited the White House on a bilateral basis in August 2018.
At that time, Kenyatta and Donald Trump identified economic development and trade as the pillar of the “strategic relationship” between Kenya and the US.