A meeting on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is currently underway in Libreville, Gabon, a port city near the Gulf of Guinea — one of the most oil rich areas on the continent.

The AGOA meeting comes at a time when many African countries that rely heavily on commodity exports are facing economic challenges as prices fall on the international market and their main export market in China faces a slowdown.

AGOA was enacted in May 2000 to give African countries duty free access to the U.S. market. The act was renewed by the .S. Congress for another 10 years in June after the initial 15-year deal expired.

Analysts however say the act alone may not be enough to jump-start exports from Africa, especially manufactured ones, to the U.S.

According to U.S. government data, nearly 80 percent of the $27 billion worth goods exported from Africa in 2013 under the deal was oil.

Michael Froman, a U.S. trade representative attending the AGOA meeting in Libreville, told Reuters that allowing African exports to access American markets duty free was “still not enough” as long as a majority of goods from the 39 nations under the pact come in unprocessed.

Froman said that the cost of producing and exporting products from Africa was too high to make them compete on a level field with products from other regions such as Latin America.

This high cost of goods is mainly due to poor transport linkages, costly electricity, corruptions and red tape in licensing processes.

“When you look at a container of coffee or textiles coming out of Africa, it is substantially more expensive and less competitive than the same container coming out of parts of Latin America,” Froman said.

Only a few African countries such as South Africa, which exports over $4 billion worth of goods each year to the U.S., have taken advantage of the treaty to export manufactured goods.

“South Africa has been able to grow the export of besides the citrus which are agricultural goods, besides those we have been able to export an enormous amount of vehicle parts into the U.S.A. market,” Voice of America quoted Dumile Cele, the Durban chamber of commerce chief executive, saying at the meeting.

According to Reuters, manufacturing accounted for only 12.7 percent, or $58 billion, of the $457-billion worth of exports from the continent in the decade to 2011, meaning that the sector remains weak even with rapid growth in African economies.

Many African leaders have lamented that their countries lack the necessary skilled labor and infrastructure to take advantage of AGOA.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, however said that the tax-free arrangement between Africa and the U.S. was a long-term process and change won’t happen overnight.

“We are working with those countries through our trade hubs and through consultations with American companies and trade ministers to try to increase the productivity of companies that are exporting to the U.S. to increase the quality of the products that they are increasing,” Thomas-Greenfield said.