Governments, even optimistic ones, had been preparing for the expiry of the United States’s trade preference programme on 30 September – the African Growth and Opportunity Act. A former senior White House official told Africa Confidential that AGOA was unlikely to be resurrected because there wasn’t the ‘focus or interest in the US Congress’ to stop it lapsing. What may replace AGOA could be a series of bilateral trade treaties with countries in which the US has special interests.

Foreseeing this, African trade officials have been trying to tie up new deals with other big economies such as China, the European Union, Turkey, the Gulf States and Brazil. And African farmers are finding new markets for their produce helped by the trade dispute between China, Europe and the US. China, which offered tariff- and quota-free trade to African states in June, is increasing food imports from the continent. Last month, Beijing approved imports of blueberries from Zimbabwe. Other products including Gambian groundnuts and cashews, Ethiopian soybean meal, and coffee and cocoa exports from a raft of African countries are also increasing.

Multi-polar economic ties beyond the US and Europe are growing. Brazil, hit by hefty US tariffs, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have announced multi-billion-dollar agriculture projects in Angola and Ghana, as they diversify their food supplies and eye Africa’s 60% share of the world’s arable land.