The African Growth And Opportunity Act Is No More – Analysis

October 11, 2025

By Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

By Charles A. Ray


(FPRI) — In addition to a US Government shutdown at midnight on September 30, 2025, due to failure to pass a spending bill, an event largely ignored by America’s mainstream media was the expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

AGOA was established by US President Bill Clinton in 2000, and gave preferential access to US markets for over thirty African nations for the past twenty-five years. The act allowed eligible606 countries to export goods to the United States duty-free, and supported the growth of industries such as textiles, agriculture, and mining.

In the run-up to September 30, several African governments and American businesses lobbied Congress and the Trump administration for an extension of the act. The administration expressed support for a one-year extension to allow further review and restructuring of the agreement, and according to reports, there was bipartisan support in Congress. Despite this, no legislation has been enacted. Officials from South Africa and Lesotho indicate that discussions with the US government are ongoing but give no signs of possible outcomes.

The end of AGOA has caused immediate trade disruptions across Africa. Countries such as South Africa, Madagascar, Kenya, and Lesotho face higher US tariffs on key exports. Madagascar, for instance, faces rates as high as 47 percent on textile and vanilla exports.

A Bundle of Negatives . . .

According to researchers at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, some African economies are likely to face “notable adverse effects.” The macroeconomic effects are assumed to be limited, but probably understate the full impact of US tariffs and the indirect effects of things like reduced foreign investment, weakened supply chains, rising poverty, and loss of capacity building. In the AGOA-dependent industries, approximately 1.3 million jobs are at risk in countries where people have limited options in the event of sudden unemployment.

In Kenya, for instance, over 66,000 people, many of them women, are employed in textile and apparel export to the American market. From garment factories and horticultural producers in Kenya to car factories in South Africa, 300,000 direct jobs and 1 million indirect jobs are in jeopardy with the end of AGOA. Protecting these jobs is not just an economic issue. They are critical to halt or limit the relocation of people into countries where migrants often face violent reactions to their presence.

. . . With a Glimmer of Hope

With the current political uncertainty in the United States, realistically, there is little hope of AGOA being on the US government’s agenda in the short term. This, however, offers the opportunity for African countries to reassess their trade strategies. Some have already taken steps in that direction. Kenya, for instance, is in the process of negotiating a free trade agreement with the United States. South Africa is seeking exemptions and quotas to maintain access to the American market for its most vulnerable industries. Zimbabwe, which was not eligible for AGOA, is looking to liberalize its customs regime to expand regional trade.

Continent-wide, there is now increased attention being given to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which kicked off in 2021. With a market of 1.5 billion people, the AfCFTA offers a long-term means of building sustained, resilient intra-African trade, provided the fifty-four countries that are signatories to the pact take the necessary actions to enhance regional integration, improve infrastructure, and promote value-added production.

The Future of US-Africa Trade

Another response to the end of AGOA, which, unfortunately, does not benefit the United States, is the expansion of African trade ties with China, India, Turkey, and the European Union. China-Africa trade in 2024, which was $295 billion, already dwarfed the $8 billion AGOA-linked trade with the United States. In addition, China has eliminated tariffs on exports from thirty-three African countries, further cementing its role as a key trade partner.

As the African focus shifts from preferential access to long-term competitiveness, regional self-sufficiency, and diversified economic partnerships, Africa’s place in and influence on the global trading system will change. If the United States does not develop a more partner-focused trade relationship with the fifty-four countries of what could become an influential member of that system, it could find itself “late to the table” and having to settle for leftovers.About the author: Charles A. Ray, a member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, served as US Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe.

Source: This article was published by FPRI

Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Founded in 1955, FPRI (http://www.fpri.org/) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests and seeks to add perspective to events by fitting them into the larger historical and cultural context of international politics.

SPACE/COSMOS

Probing dark matter with lunar radio telescopes

University of Tsukuba

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Simulated distributions of cold and warm dark matter are shown using particles color-coded by temperature, accompanied by an illustration of lunar telescopes.

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Credit: Hyunbae Park, University of Tsukuba

Tsukuba, Japan—The Universe was born 13.8 billion years ago during a rapid expansion known as the Big Bang. Around 400,000 years later, it entered a period known as the "Dark Ages," which lasted for about 0.1 billion years until the first stars and galaxies began emitting light. During this time, hydrogens atoms are thought to have emitted faint radio waves at a wavelength of 21 cm, which likely carry important clues about the beginning of the Universe.

Through numerical simulations, researchers at University of Tsukuba and The University of Tokyo predicted the intensity of the 21-cm radio signal in different models of dark matter, the mysterious invisible substance that comprises around 80% of the matter in the Universe. By reproducing the distribution of gas and dark matter in the early Universe on supercomputers, the team calculated the intensity of the radio waves during the Dark Ages with unprecedented precision.

The results imply that hydrogen gas in the dark ages produced a characteristic signal of about 1 millikelvin (one-thousandth of a degree) in the brightness temperature of sky-averaged radio emission. Crucially, dark matter is expected to produce variations of similar magnitude in this signal. Observing the global signal across a broad frequency band (~45 MHz) could therefore reveal the mass and velocity of dark matter particles.

Several lunar missions, including Japan's Tsukuyomi Project, are now aiming to build radio telescopes on the Moon. If such telescopes can detect this faint signal, they will help unlock the mystery of dark matter.

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H.P. was supported in part by grant NSF PHY-2309135 to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). N.Y. acknowledges financial support from JSPS International Leading Research 23K20035. R.B. and N.Y. acknowledge JSPS Invitational Fellowship S24099.

 

Original Paper

Title of original paper:
The Signature of Sub-Galactic Dark Matter Clumping in the Global 21-cm Signal of Hydrogen

Journal:
Nature Astronomy

DOI:
10.1038/s41550-025-02637-0

Correspondence

Researcher Hyunbae Park
Center for Computational Sciences, University of Tsukuba

Project Professor YOSHIDA, Naoki
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), The University of Tokyo Institute for Advanced Study (UTIAS), The University of Tokyo

Related Link

Center for Computational Sciences

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Journal

Nature Astronomy

DOI

10.1038/s41550-025-02637-0 

Article Title

The signature of subgalactic dark matter clumping in the global 21-cm signal of hydrogen

Europe needs reusable rockets to catch Musk’s SpaceX: ESA chief


By AFP
October 9, 2025


The SpaceX Starship rocket launches from Starbase, Texas, as seen from South Padre Island on May 27, 2025 - Copyright AFP/File Sergio FLORES
Olga Nedbaeva and Bénédicte Rey

Europe must quickly get its own reusable rocket launcher to catch up to billionaire Elon Musk’s dominant SpaceX, European Space Agency director Josef Aschbacher told AFP in an interview.

While the US company has an overwhelming lead in the booming space launch industry, a series of setbacks, including Russia’s withdrawal of its rockets, left Europe without an independent way to blast its missions into space.

That year-long hiatus ended with the first launch of Europe’s much-delayed Ariane 6 rocket in July 2024. But the system is not reusable, unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse.

“We have to really catch up and make sure that we come to the market with a reusable launcher relatively fast,” Aschbacher said at AFP’s headquarters in Paris.

“We are on the right path” to getting this done, he added.

– ‘Paradigm shift’ –

European Space Agency director Josef Aschbacher is calling on Europe to pay up to compete in a booming space economy – Copyright AFP JOEL SAGET

The ESA has already announced a shortlist of five European aerospace companies bidding to build the continent’s first reusable rocket launch system.

That number will be narrowed down to two — or even one — at the agency’s ministerial council in the German city of Bremen next month, Aschbacher said.

“Ariane 6 is an excellent rocket — it’s very precise,” Aschbacher said. “We have now had three launches,” with two more expected before the year’s end, he added.

Despite finally getting Ariane 6 and the new, smaller Vega C launcher off the ground, the ESA has decided on a “paradigm shift”, Aschbacher said.

“The next generation of launchers will be very different,” he told AFP.

When Ariane 6 was being planned more than a decade ago, reusability was not considered worth the extra cost and time.

But it has come under criticism when compared to the relatively cheap, reusable Falcon 9, which has completed well over 100 launches this year alone.

So the ESA has decided to emulate NASA, which also used to develop its own rockets but now outsources its launches to private companies such as SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

– A European Starlink? –

Many of the Falcon 9 flights have carried the more than 8,000 satellites that make up Musk’s Starlink internet network into space.

The European Union is planning to create its own internet satellite constellation called IRIS2, scheduled to become operational in 2030.

“Europe needs it absolutely urgently,” Aschbacher said.

“We have to make sure that we have the rockets to bring our satellites to space.”

He stressed that IRIS2 would be “very different” from Starlink, with fewer satellites, while focusing more on “secure communication”.

The constellation will mark a technological leap forward, even though Europe sometimes lags “a few years behind” its competitors, Aschbacher said.

Aschbacher noted that the EU’S navigation satellite system Galileo and Earth observation programme Copernicus started out 10 to 15 years behind US competitors GPS and Landsat.

Now both EU programmes are “the best in the world”, he said.

Aschbacher lamented that European public investment in space is declining, even as the global space economy grows.

He called for “very strong financial engagement” from the ESA’s 23 member states, which includes the United Kingdom, at next month’s ministerial council.

– Impact of Trump cuts? –

In the United States, President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed slashing NASA’s budget, signalling it wants to cancel the joint Mars Sample Return mission with the ESA.

If the cuts go ahead, Aschbacher said, they could also affect shared missions such as the use of the International Space Station and the Artemis programme to put astronauts back on the Moon, he said.

The three ESA missions most likely to be affected are the EnVision mission to Venus, LISA gravitational wave observatory and NewAthena X-ray telescope, Aschbacher said.

However, Europe intends to complete these “flagship missions” even if the United States pulls out — perhaps by bringing in other partners, he added.

Aschbacher also said there had been “interest from our colleagues in the United States” in applying for jobs at the ESA.

 

NUS-SCELSE researchers uncover hidden plant–microbe strategy that boosts crop growth under nutrient stress

National University of Singapore

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The researchers found that soil microbes competing with each other release glutathione which  enhances plant growth under sulphur-deficient conditions.

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Credit: SCELSE

Scientists from SCELSE – a biofilm & microbiome research centre and the National University of Singapore (NUS), have uncovered a surprising strategy plants use to thrive when an essential nutrient — sulphur — is in short supply.

The team discovered that when soil microbes compete with each other in the rhizosphere (the soil surrounding plant roots), they release a well-known compound called glutathione. This compound enhances plant growth under sulphur-deficient conditions. The catch: while plants benefit, some microbes lose out in their own growth.

The researchers call this balancing act a “trans-kingdom fitness trade-off” — where one kingdom of life (microbes) sacrifices part of its growth, while another (plants) gains resilience.

The global problem: declining sulphur in soils

Sulphur (S) is essential for plant growth, just like nitrogen and phosphorus. It supports protein synthesis, vitamin production, and stress resistance.

Historically, sulphur pollution from industrial emissions replenished soils worldwide. But with cleaner energy and stricter air-quality regulations, atmospheric sulphur levels have dropped. While good for air quality and human health, this has unintentionally reduced natural sulphur deposits in agricultural soils.

Over time, crops have drawn down existing soil sulphur, leaving soils deficient. To compensate, farmers increasingly apply synthetic sulphur-based fertilisers. These short-term fixes come with costs: runoff from farmlands contaminates rivers, lakes, and ecosystems, exacerbating environmental degradation.

The new discovery: a microbial boost

The SCELSE-led study, published in Cell Host & Microbe on 26 September 2025, provides a novel mechanistic explanation of how plants and microbes jointly navigate nutrient stress. The researchers found that when soil bacteria compete for nutrients, they release glutathione — a compound that boosts plant growth under sulphur-deficient conditions, even though it reduces bacterial growth.

This improvement in plant fitness came at the cost of bacterial fitness — a biological trade-off across kingdoms of life.

“This work introduces the concept of a trans-kingdom fitness trade-off and provides a mechanistic explanation for it,” said first author Arijit Mukherjee, who was a PhD student at SCELSE and the NUS Department of Biological Sciences when the study was conducted. “Plant fitness isn’t just about the plant itself — it’s about the whole community of microbes around it. Understanding these trade-offs helps us design better microbial solutions for resilient crops.”

Why it matters

Such trade-offs are likely widespread across host–microbe systems, not just in plants, and may represent hidden strategies by which holobionts (hosts and their associated microbes) adapt collectively to environmental cues.

For agriculture, this insight is powerful: instead of relying on chemical fertilisers, researchers can design microbial consortia (or “cocktails”) that naturally boost crop health under nutrient stress. This nature-based solution can reduce fertiliser use, improve soil health, and contribute to global food security.

Assoc Prof Sanjay Swarup, Principal Investigator at SCELSE, explained: “This study provides a blueprint for sustainable agriculture. By tapping into natural plant–microbe partnerships, we can reduce fertiliser use, protect ecosystems, and still secure global food supplies.”

From discovery to application: patent filed

To translate this breakthrough into practice, the team has filed a patent covering applications of this plant–microbe mechanism in agriculture. This will enable the development of bio-based products that support crops in sulphur-deficient soils, reducing reliance on chemical inputs.

“By considering not only microbial functions but also their interactions, we can design more effective microbial consortia for agriculture,” added Assoc Prof Swarup, who is also the Deputy Director for NUS Environmental Research Institute (NERI) and a faculty member of the NUS Department of Biological Sciences. “This is the path toward resilient, climate-ready farming.”

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Journal

Cell Host & Microbe

DOI

10.1016/j.chom.2025.09.007 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A bacterial signal coordinates plant-microbe fitness trade-off to enhance sulfur deficiency tolerance in plants

Article Publication Date

8-Oct-2025

 

How did the East Asian summer monsoon shape the genomic evolution of Engelhardia?

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

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MAIN RESULT AND FIGURE. IDENTIFICATION OF THE TERPENE SYNTHASE (TPS) GENE FAMILY IN ENGELHARDIA AND THE POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON TERPENOID BIOSYNTHESIS IN E. FENZELII.

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Credit: LI ET AL, 2025, PLANT DIVERSITY

The East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) is a key climatic driver shaping ecosystems in East Asia by regulating water and heat patterns. Its fluctuations over geological times have influenced vegetation types and species adaptation. In particular, subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests (EBLFs) have expanded significantly due to the EASM, contributing to biodiversity and providing vital ecological services. However, the genomic mechanisms behind plant adaptation to the EASM remain largely unexplored. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for uncovering how plant species have historically responded to monsoon-driven climate shifts and how they continue to adapt to ongoing environmental changes.

To investigate this, Dr. Hong-Hu Meng and colleagues from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, focused on the genus Engelhardia, a common and characteristic component of China's EBLFs, which spans multiple ecological zones from tropical rainforests to subtropical forests.

The team's findings were published as a cover article in the KeAi journal Plant Diversity under the title of "Genome analyses provide insights into Engelhardia’s adaptation to East Asia Summer Monsoon".

This work started with the sequencing of genomes of five Engelhardia species and the closely related Rhoiptelea chiliantha using PacBio HiFi and Hi-C. The resulting high-quality assemblies revealed substantial variation in genome size (414.56–985.85 Mb) and gene number (31,000–53,000).

“Phylogenomic analyses estimate the divergence between the evergreen lineages (E. fenzelii, E. roxburghiana) and the deciduous lineage (E. spicata) at approximately 52 Mya,” shares Meng. “A subsequent separation between E. fenzelii and E. roxburghiana occurred around 25 Mya, coinciding with the intensification of the EASM, which likely drove the transition from deciduous to evergreen forest ecosystems in Asia.”

Gene family analyses further support this divergence, revealing functional differentiation between the lineages. “Evergreen species have expanded genes related to photosynthesis, hormone signaling, and redox processes, whereas deciduous species have prioritized genes involved in drought response,” says Meng.

Notably, E. fenzelii exhibits a significant expansion of the TPS gene family, which likely contributes to its enhanced survival in humid, competitive environments. “Additionally, transposable elements play a key role in the larger genome size of E. fenzelii, further facilitating its adaptation to the moist, monsoonal climate,” adds Meng.

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Contact the author: Contact the author: Hong-Hu Meng, menghonghu@xtbg.ac.cn

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

 

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Journal

Plant Diversity

DOI

10.1016/j.pld.2025.07.003 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Genome analyses provide insights into Engelhardia’s adaptation to East Asia summer monsoon