How to promote cotton production in Africa?

Audio 48:30

Cotton crosses all of society and permeates the entire history of Burkina Faso.

RFI / Sayouba Traoré

By: Emmanuelle Bastide

51 mins

Mainly cultivated in Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire, African cotton accounts for 10% of world production, according to the International Cotton Consultative Committee (ICAC).

Publicity

If cotton constitutes an important part of the export earnings of producing countries, they transform very little their production of fibers locally.

A real shortfall in terms of job creation and resources.

Indeed, domestic transformation could generate nearly $ 90 billion for the continent.

As the Covid-19 pandemic crippled the global textile industry, how have African countries adjusted?

How to promote the African fiber and find other outlets? 

With :

  • Claire Fages

    , journalist in the Economics department of RFI, presenter of the

    Chronicle of Raw Materials

  • Gérald Estur

    , consultant cotton specialist

  • Adama Traoré,

     Deputy Director Confederation of Cotton Textiles and Clothing of Burkina Faso.

For further :

The raw materials column on 

the extension of the American embargo on cotton from Xinjiang, China

► The chronicle of raw materials on

the catastrophic cotton campaign in Mali in 2020

The African debate on 

the development of the textile industry in Mali.

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  • Society

  • Africa

  • Raw materials

  • Agriculture and Fishing

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