On Capitol Hill for AGOA: Notes from a Day of Advocacy with other African Diaspora Leaders

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This week I joined a delegation of African Diaspora leaders on Capitol Hill for an AGOA-focused day of advocacy. The convening was organized by ONE Campaign and the African Diaspora Network, and over the course of the day, our group met with five offices: Senators Jim Risch, Raphael Warnock, Chris Coons, and Angela Alsobrooks, and Representative Terri Sewell directly.

I came into the day with a clear angle. I wanted to speak from inside the agri-food systems I work across in West Africa, and to ground the modernization conversation in what I see when these policy frameworks land in the field. In Ghana's cocoa system, where I spent three months last year working with smallholder farmers, cooperatives, processors, and government actors at the meso level, the sector is actively reorganizing itself in response to the EU Deforestation Regulation, among other forces. That kind of on-the-ground reorganization, by multiple actors at different levels, was the lens I brought into each room. What I left with was more than I expected.

Three things continue to sit with me:

•  The caliber of the leaders around the table and the depth of what each brought. Every leader brought operational depth, sectoral expertise, or institutional reach across the US-Africa corridor. What struck me most was the orientation. Most leaders were advocating for the people within their impact footprint, not just the entities they operate. That kind of advocacy is rare, worth naming, and a good window into why we cannot afford for the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to lapse by December 2026, especially not without a successor.

• The candor of the conversations. None of the meetings treated AGOA as a perfect or finished product. The legislators and their staff were direct about the program's gaps and the political constraints around modernization. We also began to think out loud about what comes beyond AGOA, particularly for the relationships and nodes the current framework does not yet adequately serve. Services contribute more to Africa's GDP than goods. Critical minerals are reshaping the geopolitics of trade. Higher-value processed goods are where African economies are positioning themselves under AfCFTA. These are the conversations the next chapter of US-Africa economic policy will have to take on, and it was great to bring them to the fore in legislators' offices.

•  The interest from legislators and policymakers in stronger diaspora engagement. We were asked which commodities our community would prioritize for AGOA eligibility, amongst other questions that required lenses only diaspora leaders could fully answer. Sometimes, we were also met with visible surprise when we shared the magnitude of the business value the African Diaspora carries at the state level. That tells me the bridges still need to be built consistently and from different dimensions. As diaspora operators, founders, and leaders, we have a responsibility to show up more often and with greater specificity in the rooms where these decisions are made. We need to bridge knowledge gaps, serve as vehicles for carrying the voice of Africa into rooms where those perspectives can be levers of change, and proactively serve the interests of Africa and her partners, anchored in one voice.

  I left the day with more clarity about my own work and more conviction about where Graft Africa sits in this conversation. There is work to do.

Grateful to ONE Campaign, the African Diaspora Network, and every leader I shared this day with.