; Whereas the United States African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) initiated and expanded trade with four-fifths of sub-Saharan African countries since its enactment in 2001 and established an important instrument for engaging African nations on issues of trade, capacity building, good governance, human rights protections, and economic growth and job creation in the United States and Africa; Whereas the African Union’s formation in 2018 of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has created the world’s largest trade bloc by number of countries with the potential to substantially boost economic growth, create economic opportunities for women and youth, promote significant commercial investment, and fundamentally transform and expand economic engagement on the continent; Whereas the World Bank estimates that full implementation of the AfCFTA could: surge Africa’s cumulative GDP by approximately $450 billion—with most of those gains coming from streamlining the cost and efficiency of customs procedures, raise the total value of Africa’s exports in goods and services by $560 billion (40 percent of which will be from intra-African trade), lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty, boost the wages of African women and unskilled workers in particular, and enhance manufacturing production while increasing the rest of the world’s GDP by $76 billion; Whereas the Department of State, United States Agency for International Development, and other United States development agencies have facilitated private sector investment and United States commercial engagement in Africa through interagency initiatives such as Power Africa and Prosper Africa, and continue to promote regional integration in sectors such as technology, infrastructure, transportation, telecommunications, and energy