Cotton Sector Strategies In West And Central Africa

Cotton production in West and Central Africa (WCA) has contributed to growth and poverty reduction. Recently, the objective of poverty alleviation has been adversely impacted by the downward pressures on world prices (exacerbated by subsidies by major cotton producers outside Africa). Several countries in WCA are undergoing reforms in the cotton sector to stimulate greater market competition and raise the share of the international price going to farmers. While these efforts would help to improve rural income irrespective of the world market situation, they would be more powerful in combination with a reduction in other countries’ subsidies in this sector.

Cotton production is truly a success story in West and Central Africa. The region is now the second largest exporter of lint, after the United States, with a world market share of 15 percent. Despite its strong performance in the past, the sector is characterized by several institutional and structural weaknesses that jeopardize its viability in an era of increasing globalization of the cotton industry. The sector's future performance will also depend on the implications of cotton sector policies in major producing countries such as the United States, the European Union, and China. This paper examines how the above factors may affect future growth of the region's cotton industry. It also identifies the changes that are required to enable countries in the region to fully exploit the sector's significant growth potential .This paper - a product of Rural Development 2, Africa Technical Families -is part of a larger effort in the region to contribute to the debate on development strategies in West and Central Africa. The authors may be contacted at [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].

Based on comprehensive empirical studies, the paper identifies key reforms and defines strategies to enhance the competitiveness of cotton sectors in West and Central Africa. The report uses industrial organization principles to compare privatization options and design reforms to best implement sector reforms scheme

Cotton production in West and Central Africa (WCA) has contributed to growth and poverty reduction. Recently, the objective of poverty alleviation has been adversely impacted by the downward pressures on world prices (exacerbated by subsidies by major cotton producers outside Africa). Several countries in WCA are undergoing reforms in the cotton sector to stimulate greater market competition and raise the share of the international price going to farmers. While these efforts would help to improve rural income irrespective of the world market situation, they would be more powerful in combination with a reduction in other countries` subsidies in this sector.

At a time when trade negotiations on cotton have been suspended, the publication contends that with 16 million people in West African being dependent on cotton production, the dialogue between developed and developing countries must continue and sets out a framework for discussions.

In King Cotton in International Trade Meredith A. Taylor Black provides a comprehensive analysis of the WTO Cotton dispute and its significant jurisprudential and negotiating effect on disciplining and containing the negative effects of highly trade-distorting agricultural subsidies of developed countries.

The vast majority of the world s poorest households depend on farming for their livelihoods. During the 1960s and 1970s, most developing countries imposed pro-urban and anti-agricultural policies, while many high-income countries restricted agricultural imports and subsidized their farmers. Both sets of policies inhibited economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Although progress has been made over the past two decades to reduce those policy biases, many trade- and welfare-reducing price distortions remain between agriculture and other sectors and within the agricultural sector of both rich and poor countries. Comprehensive empirical studies of the disarray in world agricultural markets appeared approximately 20 years ago. Since then, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has provided estimates each year of market distortions in high-income countries, but there have been no comparable estimates for the world s developing countries. This volume is the third in a series (other volumes cover Asia, Europe s transition economies, and Latin America and the Caribbean) that not only fills that void for recent years but extends the estimates in a consistent and comparable way back in time and provides analytical narratives for scores of countries that shed light on the evolving nature and extent of policy interventions over the past half-century. 'Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Africa' provides an overview of the evolution of distortions to agricultural incentives caused by price and trade policies in the Arab Republic of Egypt plus 20 countries that account for about of 90 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa s population, farm households, agricultural output, and overall GDP. Sectoral, trade, and exchange rate policies in the region have changed greatly since the 1950s, and there have been substantial reforms since the 1980s. Nonetheless, numerous price distortions in this region remain, others have been added in recent years, and there has also been some backsliding, such as in Zimbabwe. The new empirical indicators in these country studies provide a strong evidence-based foundation for assessing the successes and failures of the past and for evaluating policy options for the years ahead.