Nora Bannerman checks the pristine white uniforms made for American pharmacist Walgreens in her factory in the humid heart of the Ghanaian capital Accra. Her Sleek Garments company exports shirts, pants and uniforms under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a 2000 US law that allows nearly 40 African countries to export some goods free of duties and quotas into the United States.

?AGOA has exposed us to the American buyer,? said Bannerman, as fans whirred overhead and sewing machines clicked and buzzed. ?But we are still struggling to compete with Chinese prices,? she added, referring to tough competition for African textile producers from surging Chinese exports.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior US trade officials will attend a two-day forum starting Wednesday in Accra, to look at ways to improve and expand the initiative. US officials say AGOA, which has been partly extended to 2015, is helping African states climb out of poverty by offering trade, not handouts ? a key demand of anti-poverty activists.

?We believe AGOA has significantly increased Africa?s opportunity to send a whole range of products to the United States they had never sent before. We know that because non-oil exports have indeed doubled,? US trade representative for Africa, Florizelle Liser, told Reuters. Still, non-oil exports represent a mere fraction of Africa-US trade. Last year, AGOA imports from Africa to the United States climbed to $44.2 billion from $38.1 billion in 2005.

But oil products, which generate fewer jobs than other manufacturing activities, accounted for more than 90 percent of this total and among the biggest beneficiaries were oil producers like Nigeria, Angola and Gabon. In 2006, non-oil products exported under AGOA amounted to $3.2 billion, and Washington wants to increase this.

?We are dead set on expanding non-oil AGOA trade,? Liser said. Canned fruits and vegetables, horticulture, cut flowers, processed minerals and metals, nuts and oils were all exports from Africa which the United States sought to expand under AGOA. Critics of AGOA argue that U.S government subsidies to American farmers keep African growers stuck in poverty, outweighing any real benefits the trade initiative might offer. They say this is especially true in the cotton sector, where West African producers complain U.S. subsidies cost them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost sales. Liser said African cotton growers also needed to look at their own efficiency.