Nov. 27 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has withdrawn South Africa’s invitation to next year’s G20 summit in Miami, Fla., escalating a row with Johannesburg.
Trump made the announcement Wednesday on his Truth Social platform as this year’s summit of the wealthy nations, held in South Africa, came to an end without the United States participating.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,” the American leader said in the statement.
Trump has escalated his criticisms against South Africa since returning to the White House.
In February, he threatened to cut U.S. funding to the African nation over a new law allowing authorities to expropriate land in the public interest as part of efforts to redress racial inequalities rooted in apartheid.
Though the law states that property cannot be expropriated arbitrarily and allows expropriation without compensation only in limited cases, Trump accused South Africa of “confiscating land” in violation of the human rights of White South Africans.
Trump has since escalated his rhetoric, alleging that White South Africans face genocide — a claim rejected by South African officials and regional leaders and not supported by available evidence.
After Trump announced that the United States wouldn’t be attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg due to “Afrikaners … being killed and slaughtered and their land and farms … being illegally confiscated,” the African National Congress described Trump’s allegations as “part of a long and disgraceful pattern of imperial arrogance and disinformation.”
“These statements are not borne of ignorance, they are deliberate attempts to distort the reality of South Africa’s democracy and to mobilize racial fear for political gain in the United States,” the African National Congress, the ruling political party of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, said Nov. 8 in a statement.
“Donald Trump’s continued siding with racist and right-wing movements across the world is well-documented and consistent with his dangerous rhetoric. From defending White supremacists at Charlottesville to vilifying African nations as ‘expletive countries,’ his record speaks of a man driven by prejudice, not principle.”
Trump on Tuesday reiterated his allegations that Afrikaners were being killed and their land being stolen from them, while stating that at the conclusion of the G20 summit in Johannesburg, the South African delegation “refused” to hand over the G20 presidency to a senior U.S. Embassy official who attended the closing ceremony.
In response, the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that since the United States did not participate in the summit, it handed over the instruments of the G20 presidency to a U.S. Embassy official at South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.
The office added that it will continue to participate as a full, active and founding member of the G20.
“It is regrettable that despite the efforts and numerous attempts by President Ramaphosa and his administration to reset the diplomatic relationship with the U.S., President Trump continues to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country,” his office said in a statement.
As part of the second international forum “Russia-Africa Expo-2025,” a roundtable discussion titled “The Potential of Africa’s Mining Industry: New Opportunities for Cooperation with Russia and China” was held at the conference hall of the Financial and Business Association of Euro-Asian Cooperation (FBAEAC). The event served as an important platform for strengthening the trilateral Russia-China-Africa partnership in industrial and technological development.
The roundtable was organized by the FBA EAC, with co-organizers including the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Council for Financial, Industrial, and Investment Policy, the Peace Foundation, the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, the Russian-African Club of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), and the company “Kapital-Info.”
The event brought together over 70 participants—diplomats, as well as representatives from business, academia, and international organizations. Among them were delegations from more than 15 African countries, as well as from Russia, China, and Iran.
The Chinese delegation played a significant role in the event. Participants included Sun Yongjun, First Secretary of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, and Liu Yan, Second Secretary, along with representatives from the “Chongqing Pump Plant” (joining online): Su Ao, Ji Xiaodong, Yang Jiaquan, Yang Yiguang, and Wang Renjie. The participation of the Chinese side confirmed the practical focus of the trilateral cooperation and the readiness for joint implementation of projects in the mining industry.
The African side was represented by a wide range of participants: Jean Rick Biyaya Kadievu (Minister Plenipotentiary of the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Russia), Sid’Ahmed Cheikh Ould Aichetou (Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania); Eric Rubayita (Counsellor of the Embassy of Rwanda); Diarra Hadja Niamé Mariam Fofana (President of the Program of Consultations and Actions for Women Leaders of Mali); Gerry Mane (Chairman of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications and IT, Guinea-Bissau); Pierre Bangourou (Africa International Trade Connection, Côte d’Ivoire); Yumssi Tichuè (Général Import Export SARL, Cameroon); Amadou Demba Sy (Demba Mining & Frères, Cameroon); Domou Nouble Bruno Alkis (GIES, Cameroon).
The presentations by the African speakers emphasized the continent’s readiness to attract investments, adopt new technologies, and build sustainable production chains. Particular attention was paid to logistics, personnel training, and environmental issues.
The roundtable was also attended by a representative of Iran—Mehdi Rezazadeh, founder and general director of ZedPay Financial System & Services P.J.S.C. His participation further underscored the cross-regional nature of the discussion and the interest in expanding financial and technological cooperation within the context of industry projects.
Li Shaobin, President of the FBA EAC, addressed the participants with a welcome speech, noting that the development of cooperation with Africa in the mining industry opens new horizons for the entire Eurasian business space.
Ivan Borisovich Arkhipov, Deputy Chairman of the Russian-Chinese Friendship Society, also delivered a welcoming address, emphasizing the importance of strengthening humanitarian and economic ties.
Sergey Korotkov, Advisor to the President of the FBA EAC, presented a message from Vitaly Vovk, Deputy Director of the Industrial Policy Department of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EAEC). In his address, Vovk noted that the constructive discussion provides a new impetus for the development of sectoral cooperation and expressed the EAEC’s readiness to assist in developing specific mechanisms for collaboration.
A presentation by Roman Isakov, a recognized expert in the mining industry, attracted particular attention from the roundtable participants. Roman Isaevich delivered a report on “Technologies and Standards of Russian Mining Companies.”
Anatoly Tkachuk, Board Member of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) and Head of the Center for International Projects and Programs at the International Congress of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (ICIE), spoke about the RSPP and ICIE mechanisms for developing joint projects in the mining sector.
Furthermore, the Russian side was represented by Daria Michurina (RSPP), Yury Malakhov (Association of Machinery Manufacturers of Kuzbass), Alexander Kotlyarsky (PROMTEK LLC, First Vice President of FBA EAC), Anton Vasilyev (SPARTA LLC, Member of FBA EAC), Alexandra Matveeva (IBEC), Viktor Lazutin (RF CCI), and Igor Khmelkov (NOBIS Company), among others.
The roundtable was moderated by Louis Gouend, founder and president of the African Business Club, chairman of the organizing committee for “Russia-Africa Expo-2025,” and president of the Cameroonian Diaspora in Russia, together with Anna Geroldovna Bezdudnaya, doctor of economics, professor, head of the Department of Management and Innovations at SPbSUE, executive director of the R&D Center for Arctic Environmental-Economic Research, and editor-in-chief of the “FBA EAC Herald” journal.
During the discussion, participants examined a wide range of issues: the formation of joint working groups and industrial clusters, the creation of joint ventures, specialist training, financial support mechanisms, the implementation of environmental standards, and the expansion of logistics chains.
Following the event, participants highlighted the need to coordinate efforts among business communities, research centers, and government structures to implement specific investment and educational projects in the mining industry.
Key conclusions and recommendations developed during the discussion included:
(i) The need to promptly establish expert working groups to prepare pilot project initiatives.
(ii) Intensifying the exchange of technologies and equipment with the direct involvement of industrial manufacturers and engineering companies.
(iii) Developing joint educational programs and academic exchanges for training qualified personnel.
(iv) Strengthening institutional project support through guarantee mechanisms and financial instruments.
(v) Implementing unified environmental standards and sustainable development practices.
Within the framework of the changing global economic architecture, Russian enterprises are highly prioritizing investments in Africa, demonstrating readiness to invest, particularly in energy, industrial technology, and infrastructure, and compete with global players.
Undoubtedly, Africa is fast becoming one of the most significant centers of power, attracting external players. One lingering question is how promptly the recommended measures designed would address historical investment gaps and ensure that agreements reached at the ‘Russia-Africa Expo-2025’ would lead to tangible outcomes.
Cape Town, South Africa – On an August evening in 1977, 30‑year‑old Steve Biko was on his way back from an aborted secret meeting with an anti-apartheid activist in Cape Town, taking the 12‑hour drive back home to King William’s Town. But it was a journey the resistance fighter would never finish, for he was arrested and, less than a month later, was dead.
Against the backdrop of increasingly harsh racist laws in South Africa, Biko, a bold and forthright youth leader, had emerged as one of the loudest voices calling for change and Black self-determination.
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A famously charming and eloquent speaker, he was often touted as Nelson Mandela’s likely successor in the struggle for freedom after the core of the anti-apartheid leadership was jailed in the 1960s.
But his popularity also made him a prime target of the apartheid regime, which put him under banning orders that severely restricted his movement, political activities, and associations; imprisoned him for his political activism; and ultimately caused his death in detention – a case that continues to resonate decades later, largely because none of the perpetrators have ever been brought to justice.
On September 12 this year, 48 years after Biko died, South Africa’s Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi ordered a new inquest into his death. The hearing resumed at the Eastern Cape High Court on Wednesday before being postponed to January 30.
There are “two persons of interest” implicated in Biko’s death who are still alive, according to the country’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which aims to determine whether there is enough evidence that he was murdered, and therefore grounds to prosecute his killers.
While Biko’s family has welcomed the hearings, the long wait for justice has been frustrating, especially for his children.
“There is no such thing as joy in dealing with the case of murder,” Nkosinathi Biko, Biko’s eldest son, who was six at the time of his father’s death, told Al Jazeera. “Death is full and final, and no outcome will be restorative of the lost life.”
The Biko inquest is one of several probes into suspicious apartheid-era deaths that South Africa’s justice minister reopened this year. The inquiries are part of the government’s plan to address past atrocities and provide closure to families of the deceased, the NPA says.
But analysts note that the inquest comes amid growing public pressure on the government to bring about the justice it promised 30 years ago, as a new judicial inquiry is also probing allegations that South Africa’s democratic government intentionally blocked prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.
Anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko is seen in an undated image. He died in police detention in 1977 [File: AP Photo/Argus]
Biko: ‘The spark that lit a fire’
Steve Biko was a medical student and national youth leader who, in the late 1960s, pioneered the philosophy of Black Consciousness, which encouraged Black people to reclaim their pride and unity by rejecting racial oppression and valuing their own identity and culture.
The philosophy inspired a generation of young activists to take up the struggle against apartheid, pushed forward by the belief that South Africa’s future lay in a socialist economy with a more equal distribution of wealth.
In his writings, Biko said he was inspired by the African independence struggles that emerged in the 1950s and suggested that South Africa had yet to offer its “great gift” to the world: “a more human face”.
By 1972, Biko’s student organisation had spawned a political wing to unify various Black Consciousness groups under one voice. A year later, he was officially banned by the government. Yet, he continued to covertly expand his philosophy and political organising among youth movements across the country.
In August 1977, despite the banning order still being in effect, Biko had travelled to Cape Town with a fellow activist to meet another anti-apartheid leader, though the meeting was aborted over safety concerns, and the duo left.
According to some reports, Biko heavily disguised himself for the road journey back east, but his attempts at going unnoticed were to no avail: When the car reached the outskirts of King William’s Town on August 18, police stopped them at a roadblock – and Biko was discovered.
The two were taken into custody separately, with Biko arrested under the Terrorism Act and first held at a local police station in Port Elizabeth before being transferred to a facility in the same city where members of the police’s “special branch” – notorious for enforcing apartheid through torture and extrajudicial killings – were based. For weeks in detention, he was stripped and manacled and, as was later discovered, tortured.
On September 12, the apartheid authorities announced that Biko had died in detention in Pretoria, some 1,200km (746 miles) away from where he was arrested and held. The minister of justice and police alleged he had died following a hunger strike, a claim immediately decried as false, as Biko had previously publicly stated that if that was ever cited as a cause of his death, it would be a lie.
Weeks later, an independent autopsy conducted at the request of the Biko family found he had died of severe brain damage due to injuries inflicted during his detention. Following these revelations, authorities launched an investigation. But the inquest cleared the police of any wrongdoing.
Saths Cooper, who was a student activist alongside Biko, remembers the moment he found out about his friend’s death. Cooper was in an isolation block on Robben Island – the prison that also held Mandela – where he spent more than five years with other political prisoners who had taken part in the 1976 student revolt.
“The news stilled us into silence,” the 75-year-old told Al Jazeera, recalling Biko’s provocatively “Socratic” style of engagement and echoing Mandela’s description of Biko as an inspiration. “Living, he was the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa,” Mandela said in 2002. “His message to the youth and students was simple and clear: Black is Beautiful! Be proud of your Blackness! And with that, he inspired our youth to shed themselves of the sense of inferiority they were born into as a result of more than 300 years of white rule.”
After initial shock at the news of Biko’s death, “then the questions flowed of what had occurred,” Cooper recalled, “to which we had no answers.”
About 20,000 people, including Black and white anti-apartheid activists and Western diplomats, attended Biko’s funeral in King Williams Town on September 25. The day included a five-hour service, powerful speeches and freedom songs. Though police disrupted the service and arrested some mourners, it marked the first large political funeral in South Africa.
His death sparked international condemnation, including expression of “concern” from Pretoria’s allies, the US and the UK. It also led to a United Nations arms embargo against South Africa in November 1977.
Three years later, the British singer Peter Gabriel released a song in his honour, and in 1987, his life was depicted in the film Cry Freedom, in which Biko was played by Denzel Washington.
Nevertheless, Biko’s stature did nothing to hasten justice.
In 1997, then-President Nelson Mandela visited the grave of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, accompanied by Biko’s son Nkosinathi, left, and his widow Ntsiki, third from left [File: Reuters]
‘The unfinished business of the TRC’
Under the apartheid regime, any further investigation into Biko’s death was effectively put to rest for decades following the official 1977 inquest.
Then in 1996, two years after the end of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to investigate past rights violations, with apartheid-era perpetrators given the opportunity to disclose their crimes and apply for amnesty from prosecution.
Former security police officers Major Harold Snyman, Captain Daniel Siebert, Warrant Officer Ruben Marx, Warrant Officer Jacobus Beneke and Sergeant Gideon Nieuwoudt – the five men suspected of killing Biko – applied for amnesty.
At TRC hearings the following year, the men said that Biko had died days after what they called “a scuffle” with the police at the Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth, while he was held in shackles and handcuffs. Up to that point, the commission heard, Biko had spent several days in a cell – naked, they claimed, in order to prevent him from taking his life.
In the decades since, it’s come to light that after being badly beaten at the Sanlam Building on September 6 and 7, Biko suffered a brain haemorrhage and was examined by apartheid government doctors, who said they found nothing wrong with him. Days later, on September 11, the police decided to transfer him to a prison hospital hours away in Pretoria. Still naked and shackled, Biko was put in the back of a van and moved. Although he was examined in Pretoria, it was too late, and Biko died on September 12 alone in his cell.
Despite admitting to beating Biko with a hose pipe and noticing his disoriented, slurred speech, the former officers claimed at the TRC that they had no indication of the severity of his injuries. Therefore, they saw nothing wrong with transporting him 1,200km away.
Eventually, the men were denied amnesty in 1999, partly for their lack of full disclosure of the events that caused Biko’s death. The suspected killers, some of whom have since died, were recommended for prosecution by the commission.
However, like most TRC cases, the prosecutions never materialised.
“The Biko case, along with others, must be viewed as the delayed activation of the unfinished business of the TRC – a matter that is a national imperative if we are to instigate a culture of accountability in South Africa,” Nkosinathi, now 54, said of the reopened inquest into his father’s death.
Though the scope of the Biko inquest has not been publicly stated, Gabriel Crouse, a political analyst and fellow with the South African Institute for Race Relations, worries that it will not examine new evidence, but that its goal will simply be to decisively determine whether Biko was murdered.
If this is the case, it would leave many questions unresolved, he says. For example, who pressured the initial forensic pathologist to declare a hunger strike as the cause of death; who ordered Biko’s killing; and what was the official chain of command?
Demonstrators protest against five former apartheid-era security policemen’s application for amnesty for their part in the killing of Steve Biko at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in 1997 [File: Reuters]
‘The worms are among us’
Although the Biko inquest has renewed hope among his family that some of the perpetrators of his death will finally be brought to justice, analysts warn that the process may reveal uncomfortable truths about the nation’s past – including possible collusion between South Africa’s current government and the apartheid regime.
Nkosinathi now heads a foundation that promotes his father’s legacy. He points out that it is only pressure on the government that brought about this moment.
Months before the Biko inquest reopened, President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered the establishment of a commission of inquiry into whether previous governments led by his African National Congress (ANC) party intentionally suppressed investigations and prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.
His move in April came after 25 survivors and relatives of victims of apartheid-era crimes launched a court case against his government in January, seeking damages.
The allegations of probes being blocked go back more than a decade. In 2015, former national prosecutions chief Vusi Pikoli caused a stir when he submitted an affidavit in a court case about the death of anti-apartheid fighter Nokuthula Simelane, in which he blamed the stalled cases on senior government officials interfering in the work of the NPA.
Former President Thabo Mbeki, who was head of state during Pikoli’s tenure, has denied that any such political interference took place. But the judicial inquiry, announced in April and now under way, lists former senior officials among those it considers interested parties.
The inquiry will look at why so few of the 300 cases that the TRC referred to the NPA for prosecution, including Biko’s, have been investigated in the last two decades.
“That it has become necessary to have to look into such an allegation tells much about how the huge sacrifice that was made for our democracy has been betrayed,” Nkosinathi told Al Jazeera.
Cooper believes the delayed prosecutions are a result of a compromise made by the apartheid regime and the ANC to conceal one another’s offences, including alleged cases of freedom fighters colluding with the white minority government.
“It’s justice clearly denied,” Cooper said, adding that he once questioned TRC commissioners about why they had concealed the names of rumoured apartheid-era collaborators who went on to work in the new democratic government. “The response was, ‘Broer, it’ll open a can of worms,’” Cooper told Al Jazeera.
“I see one of the commissioners died, the other is around, and when I see him, I say, ‘There’s no more can of worms, the worms are among us.’”
Like Cooper, political analyst Crouse also believes some kind of “backdoor deal” was struck following the transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994.
Many political actors failed to apply for amnesty, he says, despite prima facie evidence of their guilt. “And so it became very apparent that white Afrikaner supremacists and Black ANC liberationists, some from both camps, had gotten together and said, ‘Let’s both keep each other’s secrets and go forward into the new South Africa on that basis,’” he said.
Pikoli’s 2015 affidavit seems to echo such analysis. In his document, Pikoli recalls a meeting in 2006, where former ministers grilled him about the prosecution of suspects implicated in the attempted murder of Mbeki’s former chief of staff, Frank Chikane. Pikoli does not specify what the ministers objected to but says it became clear they did not want the suspects prosecuted “due to their fear of opening the door to prosecutions of ANC members, including government officials.”
A plea bargain was struck with the suspects while Pikoli was on leave in July 2007, as part of which the suspects refused to reveal the masterminds behind the compilation of a hit-list targeting activists. Pikoli believes a court trial would have forced them to disclose more details.
Priests and ministers lead the procession to the cemetery in King Williams Town for the burial of Steve Biko, on September 25, 1977 [File: Matt Franjola/AP]
‘A stress test’ for democratic South Africa
Mariam Jooma Carikci, an independent researcher who has written extensively about the failure of justice in the democratic era, believes the official inquiry into the hundreds of unprosecuted TRC cases, including Biko’s, is “a stress test” of democratic South Africa’s honesty.
“For three decades we treated reconciliation as an end in itself – truth commissions instead of prosecutions, memorials instead of justice,” she said.
She sees Biko’s ideas continuing to flourish in today’s student movements, for example, in the #FeesMustFall campaign that called for free university tuition and the decolonisation of education in 2015.
“You see his echo in decolonisation debates and student movements, but the truest honour is policy – land, work, education, healthcare – designed around human worth, not investor or political comfort,” Jooma Carikci said.
While the country waits to hear the outcomes of the Biko inquest and the wider TRC inquiry, Nkosinathi Biko remains haunted by constant reminders of his father.
His younger brother Samora, who recently turned 50, looks exactly like Biko, he says, but being only two at the time of his death, “he was unfortunate not to have had memories of his father because of what happened.”
Meanwhile, for the country in general, Nkosinathi sees connections between Biko’s death and the 2012 Marikana massacre, during which police shot and killed 34 striking miners – the highest death toll from police aggression in democratic South Africa.
In his mind, the image of police opening fire on unarmed protesting workers echoes the country’s dark history – a sign that the state brutality that ended his father’s life has spilled over into democratic South Africa.
Steve Biko’s sons Nkosinathi, left, and Samora give a Black Power salute as they sit at home with their aunt, Biko’s sister, Nobandile Mvovo, on September 15, 1977, in their home at King Williams Town [File: AP]
US tariffs are hitting African exports hard. Now, governments and businesses must devise a Plan B to expand trade and grow their economies.
US President Donald Trump is not an Africa enthusiast; he has mocked Lesotho as a place “nobody has ever heard of ” and has never set foot on the continent.
In July, however, Africans were hopeful that Trump was mellowing. At a summit in Washington with the presidents of five African nations, he announced a shift from “aid to trade” in US efforts to strengthen ties with the continent.
Pivoting US-Africa relations toward trade and investment to foster self-reliance and mutual prosperity and move away from traditional aid dependency was critical, Trump said. He had already dismantled USAID, the principal US foreign aid agency, leaving a trail of negative social effects on the continent.
Many took this seeming pledge to expand trade with skepticism. And a few weeks later, Trump unveiled the Reciprocal Tariff Rate, sending shockwaves across 22 African nations suddenly slapped with duties ranging from 15% to 30%, that started on August 7.
South Africa, Algeria, and Libya were the worst hit, their tariffs set at 30%, while Tunisia got a rate of 25%. Tiny Lesotho and crisis-ridden Chad and Equatorial Guinea were not spared as their new rates hit 15%.
Bintu Zahara Sakor, a doctoral researcher at Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), notes the contraction of promising more trade with Africa and then imposing punitive tariffs that are bound to be damaging to the continent.
“Diversification could empower Africa to dictate its trade narratives.”
Zahara Sakor, PRIO
“This mixed messaging creates uncertainty for African businesses and investors,” she says. The endgame is stifling the very trade the US purports to promote.
The Biggest Economies In The Crosshairs
While targeting only about half of the continent’s countries, two of its biggest economies, South Africa (30%) and Nigeria (15%), are on the list. Most of the others are grappling with extreme poverty and challenges of job creation. Among them is Botswana (15%), whose economy is in a recession.
By the numbers, African exports to the US are not substantial, accounting for only 1.5% of the continent’s collective GDP. Africa’s $34 billion of exports to the US are a mere 1.2% of total US imports and a drop in the ocean when juxtaposed with Washington’s $3.2 trillion global trade volume.
But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. For the past 25 years, US-Africa trade relations were defined primarily by duty-free access under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). With his new tariff schedule, Trump has discarded AGOA, damaging the prospects for future exports cutting across automobiles, machinery, textiles, apparel, minerals, and agricultural products, among others.
“What we are witnessing under Trump is US imperialism,” argues Patrick Bond, professor of sociology at South Africa’s University of Johannesburg. The damages the tariffs inflict on the continent will be immense, he predicts.
Case in point is South Africa. The US is its second-largest trading partner after China, and its agricultural and automobile manufacturing industries bear the brunt of the tariffs. According to data from NAAMSA, South Africa’s auto industry lobbying group, the US is the third-largest destination for the country’s auto exports. South Africa shipped approximately $1.9 billion worth of vehicles to the US market in 2024, accounting for 6.5% of total exports. Owing to tariffs, however, auto exports have plummeted by an average of 60% this year.
South Africa is warning that a staggering 100,000 jobs are at risk from the new duties, devastating for a country with a 33% unemployment rate and where crime is among the highest globally. The only bright spot is the exemption of platinum, gold, and other minerals, which will continue to be zero-rated.
The situation is worse in Lesotho, which ranks among the poorest nations in the world with youth joblessness at 48%. The government has declared a “state of disaster,” reckoning the US tariffs will devastate the textile and apparels industry, which employs 40,000 people.
Lesotho is one of Africa’s largest garment exporters to the US, thanks to the AGOA. In 2024, it exported goods worth a cumulative $237.2 million to the US market, 75% of that garment exports. The industry accounts for roughly 20% of GDP.
Devising A Plan B
Trump’s tariffs call for “swift policy responses” to safeguard the continent’s long-term economic prospects, Sakor urges. The AGOA was set to expire on September 30; while Congress holds the power to renew it, the current administration is not concealing its aversion to the pact. With the new tariffs, the era of regional duty-free market access under the AGOA is over. In its place, Washington wants a shift toward bilateral deals that extract concessions like market access for US goods or alignment on geopolitical issues.
“US-Africa trade relations may become more fragmented and conditional, focusing on select ‘friendly’ nations with lower tariffs or new free trade agreements [FTAs],” Sakor says. Countries like Morocco, which has a binding FTA with the US, and Kenya, which is currently negotiating one, were among those spared the backlash.
Bintu Zahara Sakor, a doctoral researcher at PRIO
With the US playing hard ball, Africa is at a point where it must devise a Plan B for future trade policy. One starting point could be deepening intra-Africa trade by accelerating implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
On paper, AfCFTA has the potential to boost intracontinental trade to 53% from around 18% currently, growing the manufacturing sector by $1 trillion, generating income worth $470 billion, and creating a whopping 14 million jobs by 2035, according to the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).
Six years after the agreement was signed, however, the continent has yet to record any tangible benefits. Last year, trade was valued at $208 billion, a 7.7% increase from 2024, according to Afreximbank. Compounding the difficulties are disintegrating regional economic community blocs and rising non-tariff barriers.
“AfCFTA is encouraging in theory, but has not yet delivered mutually advantageous market opportunities,” observes Bond. For this reason, Africa could be forced onto a different course of action: strengthening trade ties with China while exploring opportunities in other global markets.
Over the past 25 years, China has risen to become Africa’s largest trading partner. Last year, trade with the people’s republic was valued at $294.3 billion, a staggering increase from $13.9 billion in 2000, according to Chinese government data. The amount dwarfs US-Africa twoway trade, which was valued at $104.9 billion in 2024.
Chinese engagement has been a mixed blessing. Beijing has flooded Africa with cheap goods, rendering nascent industries uncompetitive. This, combined with the lessons of Washington’s volatile behavior, suggests that the continent needs to cultivate balanced and reciprocal agreements with multiple trading partners.
“Diversification could empower Africa to dictate its trade narrative,” Sakor says, arguing that this is critical if the continent is to foster sustainable growth outside of unilateral preferences like AGOA. The European Union, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea, and the Middle East are some of the markets that offer Africa opportunities for deeper trade ties, Sakor notes.
Africa must decide whether to accept the higher US tariffs as the cost of doing business, build its ties further with China and Russia, or take a more diverse approach. The latter two, obviously, would only alienate the continent further from Washington.
