Half a million new textile jobs for Africa
A textile initiative for Africa envisages huge boosts to the continent’s cotton production capacity and to textile-sector employment there.
Textile machinery group Rieter has announced a new partnership with Arise, a developer of business parks in Africa. They will work with the African Export-Import Bank on an initiative they are calling the Africa Textile Renaissance Plan. Their plan is to establish 500,000 tonnes of cotton processing capacity in Africa over the next three to five years, with the potential to add a further 500,000 tonnes of capacity further down the road. The plan will have $5 billion in financing.
The partners have also said they aim to create up to 500,000 jobs, reduce Africa’s textile imports, and boost the continent’s textile exports, including to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). AGOA has been in place since 2000. Its aim is to set up good economic relations between the US and countries in sub-Sharan Africa to boost the region’s economy. The legislation gave partner companies in Africa an initial 15 years of AGOA status. In 2015, the US extended this for a further ten years. This means that AGOA is up for renewal again this year.
Trade agreements with the US are a much-discussed subject at the start of 2025 and it is difficult to know what the position of the new administration in Washington DC on AGOA will be. Discussions on extending AGOA beyond 2025 began in November 2023. In April 2024, seven senators, representing both the Democrat and Republican parties, formally introduced the ‘AGOA Renewal and Improvement Act’, which, if it passes, will extend AGOA until 2041. Textiles have always been a key part of AGOA’s focus. One of the improvements that the 2024 act seeks to bring in is a provision to ensure “a viable clothing production sector in several African countries”.
Infrastructure requirements
Approval of this would be good news for Arise and Rieter’s Africa Textile Renaissance Plan. The partners point out that they share the intention to add more value on home soil by transforming Africa’s cotton into high-value textile products. Selection of the countries that will benefit from the new plan will be based on the availability of a reliable energy supply and of the infrastructure required to support large-scale textile parks. In terms of human resources, the renaissance will also include the provision of training centres in the selected countries to allow local people to develop and improve skill levels in textiles and apparel production.
To foster long-term growth, Rieter has committed to establishing a manufacturing presence of its own in Africa, subject, it says, to commercial viability. This will include a repair and maintenance facility in Arise’s existing industrial park in Benin. It will also include establishing spare-parts warehousing and the phased introduction of machine assembly operations. The Swiss company’s range of textile technology includes products for opening and cleaning fibres to improve yarn quality, and others for spinning preparation. It also offers a wide range of spinning systems, as well as systems for winding and texturising yarn.
Green growth
The founder and chief executive of Arise, Gagan Gupta, says the initiative has the potential to make Africa a global leader in sustainable textile production. The group describes itself as a pan-African developer and operator of industrial parks, and as being “committed to making Africa thrive”. It describes its main ambition as “green growth”, by which it means unlocking Africa’s industrial potential, but doing so while “neutralising our carbon emissions and climate impact”. It currently operates in 11 countries. As mentioned, one of these is Benin.
Its Golo-Djigbé Industrial Zone (GDIZ) is a public-private partnership between Arise and the government of Benin, located around 40 kilometres inland from Cotonou, Benin’s biggest city and home to the country’s main airport and to one of the largest seaports in West Africa. GDIZ is still being developed phase by phase but, when complete, it will cover more than 1,600 hectares.
More than 40 industries already have a presence at GDIZ, including pharmaceuticals, ceramics, soyabean and cashew nut processing and even electric bikes production. A major feature, though, is the already established, dedicated GDIZ textile park. Arise describes this facility as fully integrated, with operations from spinning to finished garment production taking place on site. Sports and leisure brand US Polo Association introduced its first made-in-Benin garments in 2024; operators at GDIZ made sweatshirts, polo shirts and T-shirts for the brand.
Benin produced 580,000 tonnes of cotton in season 2022-2023, according to government figures, second in Africa to Mali, where production that season reached 690,000 tonnes. The Benin government presents its crop as sustainable, rain-fed, GMO-free and traceable through the Cotton made in Africa programme.
Future development
Rieter’s chief executive, Thomas Oetterli, says: “We are convinced that the Africa Textile Renaissance Plan marks an important starting point for the future development of the textile industry in Africa.” For his part, Nigerian economist Professor Benedict Oramah, who is president of the African Export-Import Bank, says that transforming the raw material that Africa’s cotton production provides into high-value textile products on home soil will be a game-changer for trade on the continent. “It will drive industrialisation and reduce dependence on imports,” he says, “while building a competitive export base.”
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Africa’s so-called Cotton Four (C4) countries, Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin and Chad, continue to place great economic importance on the fibre, even though other export categories now have greater prominence. For example, in the year 2000, cotton contributed 55% of Burkina Faso’s total export revenues. By 2020, this figure had fallen to 3% as gold took over. Something similar happened in Mali, while petroleum has become by far the principal source of export revenue in Chad. Benin, which produces gold, refined petroleum and cotton, appears to have a better export balance. In each of the four countries, FAO estimates, cotton still provides a livelihood for around 20% of the population. To take the African cotton sector forward, adding value, securing these jobs and creating new ones, is important work.
Transforming more of Africa’s cotton into high-value textile products on home soil will be a game-changer for trade on the continent, the African Export-Import Bank states.
CREDIT: Malicky Boaz for CmiA
