African countries which export textiles and clothing to the United States are calling for an extension to a U.S. law which gives them favourable market access, said Jaswinder Bedi, Chairman of the African Cotton and Textile Industries Federation (ACTIF), which represents 17 countries.

AGOA has accorded duty and quota-free access for many sub-Saharan African nations' products such as textiles since 2000, but it is scheduled to expire in 2015, a deadline which Bedi said caused uncertainty, keeping potential investors away. The problem with a time-bound agreement is that it creates a lot of uncertainty and a lot of predictability issues, so the buyers don't want to really put up a fully-fledged.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, the first black person to hold the post, attended the annual AGOA Forum which opens in Kenya's capital had made attention to African trade concerns a feature of his first few months in office. He is expected to tell West African nations that the United States can only cut cotton subsidies as part of a larger pact where developing countries like India and China open their markets to more U.S. cotton exports.