Will Stevens, U.S. Consul-General, has urged Nigerian businesses to take advantage of the African Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA) to diversify their export portfolios to his country.
Stevens made the call at the opening of the AGOA workshop with Prosper Africa on Monday in Lagos.
Prosper Africa is a U.S. Presidential-level national security initiative to scale two-way trade and investment between the U.S. and Africa to transformative and strategic levels.
The workshop aimed to equip export-ready Nigerian businesses and relevant stakeholders with the necessary knowledge and skills to maximise the benefits of AGOA and improve its utilisation in Nigeria.
According to Stevens, AGOA is a unilateral trade benefit that the U.S. gives to over 40 African nations that allows them to import their goods into the country duty-free.
“We want to see more from Nigeria, which exports in this programme are actively almost $4 billion, primarily in the oil and gas sector.
“This workshop is about diversifying those exports and getting small and medium enterprises access to sell textiles, jewellery, agricultural products and others under AGOA.
“There are several people who are already exporting under AGOA, and the goal is to dig them in and spread the news to other businesses,” he said.
Wofai Samuel, Acting Director-General, Nigerian-American Chamber Of Commerce, lauded the American Government for continually building skills and capacities in Nigerians and other Africans.
She said that the workshop was an example of the U.S. investing in people who later shaped the destinies of their countries.
Samuel stressed the need for more Nigerian youths to explore the agricultural sector.
She said that youths were not fully involved in agriculture because it had not been mechanized to a large extent.
She said: “When you talk about AGOA, you are talking about production and export of agricultural products.
“For us to have more youth participation in the agricultural sector, to see that they benefit more from AGOA and get it renewed in 2025, we need to make the sector more attractive.”
