Mozambique joins Cotton made in Africa initiative
The Aid by Trade Foundation’s Cotton made in Africa (CmiA) initiative has welcomed a new project country in Southeast Africa, which will join the five existing partnership countries. Approximately 75,000 smallholder cotton farmers in Mozambique are to join and participate in the initiative. Mozambique, like the other project countries, is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world.
CmiA’s aim is to help such countries through trade, breaking the circle of poverty and improving the living conditions of now more than 420,000 African smallholder farmers in six African countries.
Mozambique follows Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi and Zambia to become the sixth project country for CmiA. Locally the initiative will collaborate with the cotton company Mozambique Plexus. Overall around 255,000 smallholder farmers and their family members will profit from this partnership.
Christoph Kaut, managing director of the Aid by Trade Foundation said: “Our goal is to fight poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. With the addition of smallholder farmers and their families in Mozambique, our work now reaches a total of over 2.6 million people and will produce an estimated 160,000 tons of ginned cotton this year. This means that around 15% of all cotton produced in sub-Saharan Africa is already being sustainably cultivated in accordance with the CmiA standards.”
Around 80% of the population of Mozambique work in agriculture, according to CmiA. On the Human Development Index, the United Nation’s prosperity indicator, the country ranks forth from last.
