The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) masquerades as a boost for Africa's development http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/71330

The last decade has seen a remarkable surge in US economic interest in the continent of Africa. Policymakers who once considered Africa the languid backwater of global economics are now rushing in to stake a claim in the continent’s enormous resource endowment. Most of this effort operates with a rhetoric focused on ‘partnership’ and ‘development’, with the vision of using US trade and investment to lift Africans out of poverty. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exemplified this attitude when she spoke last year at a US-Africa trade policy forum, saying, ‘Let’s help each other make Africa all that it can be.’But a quick look at the trade policy itself shows that this sugary rhetoric of American benevolence and concern for African welfare is deeply misleading. It does little more than cloak an agenda firmly rooted in economic realpolitik.