Cotton exporter Benin growing home-grown textile business By Reuters

By Pulcherie Adjoha

GLO-DJIGBE, Benin (Reuters) – On a big manufacturing unit flooring in southwestern Benin, dozens of younger individuals reduce, sew and assemble cotton shirts – a part of a serious push by the West African nation to develop its textile sector.

Benin has in the previous few years change into Africa’s main cotton producer, with annual manufacturing of 728,000 tonnes in 2020/21, based on authorities figures. It exports virtually all of that uncooked, with the bulk going to Bangladesh.

Now, an initiative is underneath option to create jobs and income by processing the cotton domestically, with the objective of exporting attire to shopper markets in Europe, Asia, Africa and america.

“We’ve got determined that on this nation, we’re not going to promote this cotton uncooked. We’re going to rework this cotton, specifically by putting in built-in textile factories,” stated Letondji Beheton, managing director of the Glo-Djigbe Industrial Zone (GDIZ), about 45 km from Cotonou.

GDIZ began two years in the past as the results of a partnership between the federal government and Come up Built-in Industrial Platforms (Come up IIP), a pan-African enterprise partly owned by the Africa Finance Company.

Greater than $1 billion has been invested within the zone to date, which can embrace textile factories in addition to cashew processing models, pharmaceutical processing models, and extra, stated Beheton. Solely 1 / 4 of it has been developed to date.

Though the techniques usually are not but in place to get cotton from discipline to manufacturing unit, GDIZ has began coaching about 1,000 garment staff utilizing imported supplies for now.

“When the Glo-Djigbe manufacturing unit begins its actions, I’m positive that we’ll earn extra,” stated 46-year-old cotton farmer Leonard Madjaedou, who has benefited from authorities help to spice up his yields.

In 13 months, the commercial zone goals to make use of 15,000 individuals in three textile factories that can have a processing capability of about 40,000 tonnes of cotton fibre, Beheton stated.

Finally, he envisages a multi-billion greenback business that would course of nearly all of Benin’s cotton.

Cotton is grown in a number of West African nations together with Mali, Togo, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, however most is exported uncooked with little industrial processing throughout the area.