Sisule F. Musungu – The eighth African Growth and Opportunity Act -8th AGOA Forum- takes place in Nairobi, Kenya from the 4th to the 6th August 2009. The theme for this year’s Forum is “Realizing the Full Potential of AGOA through Expansion of Trade and Investment”. The theme sounds depressingly similar to the themes of the last two forums. The theme of the 7th AGOA Forum, in 2008, was “Mobilizing Private Investment for Trade and Growth” and that for the 6th Forum, in 2007, “As Trade Grows, Africa Prospers: Optimizing the Benefits under AGOA.” The topics in the Forum Programme are also fairly familiar. The familiarity of topics and like sounding themes year in year out might not necessarily be a negative thing. But it is a reason to look beyond the surface.
Archive for the ‘International Trade Regulation’ Category
U.S. –Africa Trade: Assessing Nine Years of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)
Monday, August 3rd, 2009WTO Public Forum 2009: Trade, financial crisis and the future
Friday, March 6th, 2009The World Trade Organization (WTO) has announced that its Annual Public Forum will take place from 28th to 30 September 2009 at its headquarters in Geneva. The title of this year’s Forum is “Global Problems, Global Solutions: Towards Better Global Governance”. (See WTO website at http://www.wto.org/english/forums_e/ngo_e/forum09_background_e.htm for details). Last year, the topic was “Trading into the Future”. Are we going forward or backwards? One important question to ask about this year’s forum topic is whether global governance is the central issue in thinking about the impact of the financial crisis on trade financing, especially in developing countries and least-developed countries (LDCs), and how to tackle protectionism.
