Following the phasing out of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, the textile industry and, thus cotton consumption, is shifting to Asia. Building on its longstanding work with Asian textiles and clothing producers, ITC is facilitating cooperation among developing countries, with a special focus on links between Africa and Asia. This involves five main themes.

Learning from success. Training programmes organized by ITC allow successful cotton producers in countries such as China, Turkey and India to share their knowledge with cotton professionals from Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. This includes the transfer of cotton growing and processing technologies, such as good agricultural practices and development of high yielding and resistant cottonseed varieties.

Developing capacity to transform cotton. Through ITC training, successful textile and clothing producers are relaying their experiences to African countries. So far training events have taken place in China, India, Turkey, Korea and Bangladesh, with plans to expand such cooperation to Indonesia, Thailand and possibly Pakistan.

Promoting African cotton. ITC also links up African producers with potential customers through promotional activities in Asia. These aim to give African producers a better understanding of Asian markets, including the need to assure importing countries of the reliability and quality of supply.

Sourcing from other developing countries. Encouraging African producers to search out suppliers in the developing world promotes savings on items ranging from seeds and fertilizer to textile technology. ITC currently is incorporating such work into its programme.

Encouraging intra-African cooperation. Better knowledge of the cotton and textile sectors in other African countries is essential to regional strategies, yet is often lacking. ITC views such cooperation as a first step toward joint activities that could eventually differentiate African cotton and textiles on world markets.

The ITC African Cotton Development Initiative is partially funded by the European Union as part of the ACP (African Caribbean Pacific) Agricultural Commodities Programme.