the case of cotton

The case of cotton illustrates the hurdles that Africa has to surmount. Africa is the world’s third largest producer, turning out high-quality cotton at competitive prices. In West Africa cotton provides a living for a million farmers. Cotton production in francophone West Africa has soared from 100,000 tons a year at independence in 1960 to 900,000 tons. In Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Togo, cotton represents between 5 and 10 per cent of GDP, more than a third of export income and more than 60 per cent of agricultural export income. Production costs in West Africa are about 38 cents a pound. By comparison, production costs in the United States are more than twice as high. But the US provides its 25,000 cotton farmers with an annual subsidy of $4 billion – more than the value of the entire crop. US farmers have therefore been able to export cotton at one-third of what it costs them to produce. Over a period of fifteen years, they have gained nearly one-third of the world market. A study by Oxfam in 2002 calculated that, as a result of the US subsidy, the world price was 25 per cent lower than it would otherwise have been. It estimated that the cost to Burkina Faso was 1 per cent of its GDP or 12 per cent of its exports; to Mali, 1.7 per cent of GDP or 8 per cent of exports; and to Benin, 1.4 per cent of GDP or 9 per cent of exports. According to Oxfam, the trade losses associated with US farm subsidies that West Africa’s eight main cotton exporters suffered outweighed the benefits they received from US aid.


The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.