A US House committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would renew for another three years Washington's preferential trade programme for Africa, and there was no immediate mention of excluding South Africa as the US trade envoy had said was possible.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), a law first enacted in 2000 to provide duty-free access to the US market for eligible Sub-Saharan countries and products, expired in September and hundreds of thousands of African jobs are estimated to depend on it.
