Africa’s cotton industry is “on the cusp”, WTO director-general says
The director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said countries in west and central Africa are “on the cusp of creating a modern textiles and garment industry”.
She was speaking in Yaoundé, Cameroon, at the end of March at a high-level meeting ahead of the 2026 WTO Ministerial Conference. Ministers, heads of international agencies, development finance institutions, private sector partners and representatives of football’s governing body, FIFA, took part in the meeting.
The WTO said it wanted the Yaoundé meeting to be the launch of a new phase of an initiative called PPC, or ‘Partenariat Pour le Coton’ (‘Partnership For Cotton’), which it formally announced in 2024. This initiative aims to help African countries move up the cotton value chain and play a bigger role in transforming cotton into textiles and clothing.
This new phase of the initiative will have a focus on mobilising investment to accelerate the transformation of the cotton textile and garment value chain. It will build on what the WTO called the leadership of the major African cotton-producing countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali, plus Côte d’Ivoire (known together as the C4+ group).
“Today, around 98% of the region’s cotton is exported as raw fibre, although the region has the potential to position itself as a gateway for processing this cotton and transforming it into textiles and garments,” the WTO said.
At the Yaoundé event, FIFA representatives, including former Cameroon national team and FC Barcelona striker Samuel Eto’o, unveiled new T-shirts and polo shirts produced by Benin from African cotton for the FIFA Football for Schools programme.
