OUR STORY
“Living in Liberia has given me the opportunity to travel extensively throughout West Africa and other parts of Africa. I found the honest portrayal of the challenges and the opportunities ahead to be very exciting. I was particularly struck by the desire to reach the right balance between a vital economy and preserving and enjoying the quality of life Africa has to offer.” Duncan
ShopAGOA Ready to Make a Change
The appetite for authentic African products has grown in the United States, largely due to a fast-growing African diaspora community. Yet finding those products has proven to be a challenge for many consumers and wholesalers. ShopAGOA was created to help resolve that problem by affording sellers and buyers the opportunity to access the US market and authentic African products.
Our story began in 2017 in Liberia West Africa. While serving as the Secretary-General of the Liberia Chamber of Commerce (LCC), Stephanie Duncan came across a sign outside the LCC building that read AGOA Resource Center. Duncan inquired about the resource center. However, to her surprise, no one knew what AGOA was. The most common answer was “it was something given by the American Government” which didn’t explain much. There was no visible center; neither was there any pamphlets or brochure about AGOA. Duncan did some research on her own. After a few google searches and some phone calls, she was directed to the USAID West African Trade Hub in Ghana. The trade hub offered to send a representative to Liberia to conduct some sensitization about AGOA. Indeed, this was a gift from the American Government.
AGOA took effect on January 1, 2007, and gave countries like Liberia an opportunity to trade and export locally made goods and products to the United States. Unfortunately, since the agreement was signed, Liberia has exported once under AGOA. Duncan saw this as a great opportunity for creating jobs and eradicating poverty if two marginalized groups in Liberia, women, and Micro, Small, & Medium size enterprises (MSMEs), were provided the necessary tools and resources.
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Micro, Small, & Medium size enterprises (MSMEs) are defined by Liberia’s Small Business Act as companies with under 50 employees. Most Liberian-owned companies fall within the MSMEs category, while the medium and large companies are majority foreign-owned companies. Over 50% of MSMEs are owned by women.
Duncan quickly mobilized twenty (20) MSMEs, mostly women business owners, to participate in the sensitization. The first internal challenge Duncan faced was that the leadership of the LCC showed no interest in AGOA. The membership of the LCC was dominated by foreign male traders whose primary trade activities consisted largely of importation. Despite the initial lack of interest, Duncan proceeded with the assistance of USAID. She also reached out to several Government entities to help map out the procedure and cost for shipping from Liberia to the U.S.
Following the sensitization training, a database of Liberian MSMEs interested in exporting under AGOAwas created. Within one year, the buzz about AGOA was making its rounds in the business community.
In 2018, several members of the LCC sponsored twelve (12) MSMEs to attend an AGOA Trade Fair in New York, USA. Following the trade fair, a proposal was made to Liberia’s Ministry of Commerce to draft a well-defined *National Strategy for AGOA which will allow Liberian businesses to benefit from AGOA.
After the trip to New York, Duncan organized several monthly trade fairs under the theme Made in Liberia Fair. The goal was to create a buzz about locally made products and services, promote export under AGOA, and prepare these MSMEs to be export-ready. Within one year, the database quickly grew to more than 100 MSMEs.
AGOA & Africa
During several conferences for the ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme (ETLS) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Duncan met with several leaders of women’s business organizations throughout Africa to discuss trade under the three trade instruments, AGOA, ETLS, and AfCFTA. Duncan found a common theme with other MSMEs owners throughout the continent. MSMEs found it difficult to export to the US market under AGOA due to weak adherence to international products packaging and standards, insufficient capacity, inadequate infrastructural provision, lack of knowledge about the US market, and limited access to the U.S. market, among others.
Although organizations like the US Trade Hubs are helping address many of these challenges, there’s still a missing link in connecting these MSMEs directly with consumers, distributors, suppliers, and manufacturers, all in one place. MSMEs needed a platform to consistently market their products, both retail, and wholesale.
Duncan hosted the first ShopAGOA Trade Fair in November 2019 in Washington DC under the theme “Accelerating MSMEs Through AGOA”. The event connected MSMEs from AGOA eligible countries with sellers, and buyers (both retail, and wholesale) in the United States, the first of its kind.
During the 2019 ShopAGOA panel discussion, Ms. Allison Scott from the U.S Drug & Food Administration's ORA’s Division of Import Operations provided some startling data that showed the poor trade performance of MSMEs from Africa under AGOA. In 2018 alone, the US spent more than $2.6 trillion on imports from over 200 countries. Despite this huge and lucrative trade opportunity and a large African diaspora community in the States, Africa’s sales to the US only made up 1.4% of America’s total imports in 2018.1
Ms. Scott attributed this to many companies not understanding U.S. Food &Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. Many companies are using the “products in the suitcase” approach to bypass the challenging trade barriers in many eligible African countries. How do we get companies to ship through legal channels rather than the suitcases? With a connection in both the US and many sub-Saharan African countries, ShopAGOA is establishing itself as the middleman.
The event fell short of offering a platform that could consistently connect buyers with sellers.
