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Pre-AGOA Senior Officials and Experts Meeting
Kicks off in Chevy Chase, Maryland
/ By: Tsehaye Debalkew, Washington DC, May 2, 2012/
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A three-day
confab of the 11th AGOA/African Growth and Opportunity Act/ Forum, the Preparatory
meeting for Senior Officials and Experts under the theme "Enhancing Africa's
Infrastructure for Trade opened here yesterday with the active participation
of the leaders of the entire member countries representing the African continent
and the African Union Mission to the USA.
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The Forum during its opening
day session held the election of the Bureau, examined the Matrix of AGOA
decisions, reviewed the AGOA implementation at country level and intimated
itself with the Strategic Framework paper presented during the function.
In a key note remark he made during the opening session of the Confab, Ambassador
Girma Birru, Special Envoy and Ambassador Extra-ordinary and Plenipotentiary
of the Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to the US and non-resident Ambassador
to Mexico, who is the current Vice-Chair of AGOA Consultative Group and the incoming
Chair of the Ambassadors' Group of the AGOA eligible countries highlighted the
salient objectives of AGOA emphasizing for the need to find ways and means not
only to diligently follow through the AGOA Themes charted out but also to meticulously
ensure that they are translated into best practices that would certainly and
ultimately be beneficial to the people of Africa at the grass root level. |
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In his presentation of the core
factors that require the utmost attention of the participants of the session
the Chairman of the group implored on the occasion for the inescapable
contour to critically look at the path thus traversed since the august
Enactment of AGOA and stressed for the need for designing a monitoring
and evaluation tool box that would entail that a robust mode of self-analysis
is in place to envision the prospects of AGOA beyond 2015.
The Ambassador further reminisced some of the key recommendations that emerged
during the last AGOA Forum held in Zambia and expressed his gratitude to the
US for explicitly concurring to extend AGOA preferences and the Third-Country
Fabric beyond their current life spans in a solemn response to the pleas made
by us Africans.
According to information retrieved during the occasion, the session is set to
observe pertinent presentations by representatives from public, government, the
private sector and the academia pertaining to topics of relevance to AGOA. |
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