Manufacturing Challenges

Larry Elliot writes about Africa's manufacturing challenges:

Textiles and clothing account for one fifth of Africa's manufactured exports (and in a country such as Lesotho, well over 90%), but competition has intensified since the scrapping of the multi-fibre agreement (MFA) in 2005 removing the quotas that had limited China's exports..."Development studies experts state that"...scales [of production] are low in sub-Saharan African plants, and many producers suffer from poor bureaucratic and physical infrastructure. But there is pervasive evidence that many SSA plants suffer from low levels of productivity arising out of organisational procedures, low levels of skill and inadequate management within plants."
All these factors are evident in Mali, one of Africa's biggest producers of cotton, which - in theory - could turn the raw material into finished garments. Yet Mali is one of the poorest 10 countries in the world. At a ginning factory an hour's drive south of the capital, Bamako, 97% of the cotton is exported to be turned into clothes. Marks & Spencer arrives next week to look at the potential for sourcing organic cotton from Mali, but will almost certainly take the raw material out of the country for processing.