Zimbabwe far from benefiting from AGOA- US officials say

Zimbabwe will not benefit from the United States’ Africa Growth and Opportunity Act until it improves its governance and there is a return to the rule of law, two senior United States officials said this week.

Speaking at briefing ahead of the AGOA meeting to be held in Lusaka, Zambia, next week, United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, said the US could review its stance on Zimbabwe once the country had fully implemented terms of the Global Political Agreement.

“We would like nothing more than to see the Global Political Agreement between ZANU-PF and the MDC fully implemented as quickly as possible,” Carson said. “If that agreement were fully implemented and the government moved towards a new constitution and new elections, it would have a remarkable impact on the way we look at Zimbabwe and the way Zimbabwe’s eligibility for AGOA would be viewed.”

Carson, who was the US ambassador to Zimbabwe from 1995 to 1997, said the last three presidential elections in Zimbabwe had been seriously flawed putting into question the commitment of the government to democracy.

“Zimbabwe’s last three presidential and parliamentary elections have all been highly contested and seriously flawed. That has called into question the commitment of the government to have good governance as a priority and democracy as a principle,” he said.

AGOA was signed into law on 18 May 2000 and was meant to give preferential trade to sub-Saharan countries. There are 37 member of AGOA and according to Florie Liser, Assistant US Trade Representative for African Affairs, the US has imported $44 billion worth of goods from Africa over the past 10 years but only $4 billion is for non-oil goods.

Liser said Zimbabwe and all the other countries that were not members of AGOA were not eligible generally because they “had what we call rule of law or governance issues”.

“And in the case of Zimbabwe at this point, I think that we are and will be looking at what has happened on the ground there in terms of addressing those governance and rule of law issues. And at any point that we are able to determine that a country has met its AGOA eligibility criteria, any day of the year there can be a recommendation that goes forward that they be made eligible. So we are looking forward to the time when Zimbabwe and others that are currently not eligible do meet the criteria. Our goal is not to keep countries out of AGOA but to get all the countries into AGOA.”

Carson added: “As Florie pointed out, the idea is not to exclude countries from AGOA. We believe that it is important for all African governments to do as much as they can to promote the principles of democracy and good governance, and also to do as much as they can to strengthen their economies in order to foster sustained and long-term economic development. Right now, Zimbabwe falls short on those.”

Carson was one of the senior officials to whom the diplomatic cable in which Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai wanted help from the West to end the political stalemate in Zimbabwe was sent.

Tsvangirai complained that there was a stalemate because President Robert Mugabe was being managed by hardliners from his ZANU-PF party but he wanted to “manage” Mugabe himself.

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