Agoa dilemma: why poultry could be the sacrificial lamb

IN 2015, when South Africa agreed to American demands to remove anti-dumping restrictions on United States chicken imports, the decision was sold as a narrow concession to secure broader benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).

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What followed was not a sterile trade technicality but a real economic trade-off: access for US chicken became, for many in the poultry sector, shorthand for jobs lost, transformation delayed, and export ambitions blunted.

Agoa was a strategic instrument for South Africa, the poultry concession allowed it to preserve duty-free access to the US for priority exports, from vehicles to citrus.

The 2015 Agoa extension expires at the end of this month, and may not be renewed. What will survive, however, is a huge annual quota of US chicken that will come in at dumped prices free of any tariff restrictions, because that is what South African trade negotiators have offered to the US.

The 2015 tariff-rate quota that allowed roughly 65 000 tonnes (now 72 000 tonnes) of US bone-in chicken into the South African market was perceived by the poultry industry as the price of that wider arrangement.

The industry estimated large job losses and explained why the concession undermined domestic producers.

For example, in Hammarsdale roughly 1 350 workers out of a workforce of just over 2 700 lost their jobs at just one producer. While some industry figures may be contested by importers, it is a stark indicator of the human costs at stake.

Fast forward: the policy choices that follow Agoa bargaining continue to reverberate.

The government has at times suspended or delayed trade-defence measures (notably the mid-2022 pause on implementing anti-dumping duties), citing consumer-price pressures.