“So there are some debates given the first AGOA was passed in 2000 and Africa has changed, so should there be different things included now in AGOA,” Cooke told AFKInsider.

That’s one side of the argument – it needs changes.

“The other alternative is ‘just get it through as it is or with minimal changes.’ So do you pass it clean, or laden it with changes to language on a number of different things,” Cooke told AFKInsider.

“If it doesn’t get passed or if it gets passed at the last minute, it causes all kinds of disruptions and uncertainties for buyers and sellers. And so, just the uncertainty alone is damaging,” says Cooke.

“One always has to be concerned that these kinds of issues somehow or another will get tramped in some kind of titanic struggle between the executive and the legislative parts of the government,” Campbell told AFKInsider.

Campbell says a good example of this type of struggle is the fact that there are a “huge number” of ambassadorial positions vacant because Congress would not approve the ambassadors.

“It had nothing to do with the ambassadors; it had to do with Congressional anger – rather Republican anger – over Senate Democrats changing the rules,” Campbell told AFKInsider. “So these kinds of issues can always intervene.”

“There’s never any assurance that any piece of legislation – or frankly most things in life – are guaranteed, but within the last couple of weeks there’s been some quite positive rumblings that the House and Senate are coming close to a conference version of the Electrify Africa Act that would then be pushed through both chambers.” Leo told AFKInsider.

“The question of AGOA for me is, does this Congress begin to wrap its head around those issues; they’re not super high priority issues for Congress in the grand scheme of things, but they’re important non-the-less to kind of sustain the momentum,” Cooke told AFKInsider.