As noted previously, the Trade Subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means held a hearing on trade with Africa and AGAO - the African Growth and Opportunity Act - on July 29.  Representative Vern Buchanan, a Republican from Florida, is a member of the Trade Subcommittee, and today's quote was part of the prelude to his exchange with the three witnesses.  Agreed to by both sides of the aisle, those three were Ben Leo from the Center for Global Development, William McRaith of PVH Corporation, and Whitney Schniedman of Brookings. 
Congressman Buchanan's exchange with Mr. McGrath was especially compelling, and we will quote it at some length. First, though, a touch more background.

William McRaith is the chief supply chain officer for PVH corporation.  The company began in 1881 "mending and selling shirts for local coal miners in Pennsylvania" and is now an $8 billion enterprise with such brands as Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Van Heusen, Arrow, Izod and others.  Recently, Mr. McRaith and executives from other apparel firms undertook an investment study mission to Africa.  He talked about that trip in his written testimony, where he said that "every one of the other companies we had cajoled to join us on the trip agreed that Africa is ready for significant investment."

Congressman Buchanan told the witnesses that he had visited some ten African countries during the course of the last few years.  There is "not a lot of enthusiasm" for AGOA on their side, he said.  "And frankly," he added, "there's not a lot of enthusiasm on our side."  And so he asked, "What are a couple of things that you would recommend we might do going forward to make the difference?"
With that background, here is an excerpt from Rep. Buchanan's exchange with Mr. McRaith (our transcript):

On Wednesday, September 10, GBD will host a session on Africa and American Trade Policy: An Update, with speakers from Capitol Hill (Angela Ellard), USTR (Florie Liser), and Exim (Benjamin Todd).  This session is slated to run from 8:30 to 10 a.m. at the National Press Club in Washington.  Please click the title link for registration options and other details.

If Mr. McRaith is correct, the notion of America being in third place in Africa isn't so much a future to be avoided as it is today's reality.  Our impression is that that is in fact a widely recognized reality.  Still if you were looking for evidence to back it up, you might start with the title of Howard French's new book, China's Second Continent.  On page 4, French tells us that "China's trade with Africa zoomed to an estimated $200 billion in 2012 ..., placing it well ahead of the United States or any European country."

A more pointed comparison perhaps was the subject of an anecdote from his travels in Ghana.  French writes:

For French those signs symbolize a soft power contest between the U.S. and China, with the U.S. "hectoring Africans about their behavior," and China giving them hospitals, railroads, airports.

To be fair, the story French tells is a much bigger and richer one, and it is really much more about China and Africa, both separately and together, than it is about China's competition with the U.S. in Africa or anywhere else.  Given the fact that Africa is now a magnet for Chinese emigrants - French's real story - one might as well accept that China's economic relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa is going to be larger than America's for the foreseeable future.  As for the fundamental character of the African economies of the future, however, that's another question, and one way or another AGOA will be part of the answer.