Organization and Performance of Cotton Sectors in Africa ... - infoDev

concluded that, in West Africa’s single-channel systems (which to that time hadbeen far more successful than systems in Anglophone countries), “privatizationof input distribution . . . should be considered only with the greatest caution,due to the need to link distribution with credit and output marketing” (Lele,Van de Walle, and Gbetiobouo 1989: 31). This review further cautioned aboutthe potential “collapse of the cotton industry in francophone Africa” if researchand extension were moved out of existing single-channel systems withoutviable alternative institutional approaches to ensuring the continuity of theseactivities. Within Francophone African countries, one important basis foropposition to reform has been fears that input credit and extension would beundermined.In both the subsidies debate and the debate on structural reform of cottonsectors, little attention has been paid to countries of East and Southern Africa(ESA). Yet production in ESA has been growing steadily, and reached nearlyhalf a million tons of lint in 2004/05. Serious structural reform of cotton sectorsin ESA, including the elimination of existing single-channel systems,began in the early 1990s and much has been learned about the process. Reformin countries of WCA has been slower for a number of reasons: the single-channelsystems were very strongly established in many WCA countries; stakeholderscould point to substantial successes in addition to clear and mounting problems;and the sheer number of farmers involved—and the size of the publiccompanies serving them—made reform difficult from political, social, andcommercial perspectives. The developed-world subsidies referred to earlieralso fueled internal resistance to reform. Yet nearly all countries in WCA havemade substantial incremental changes in their systems, and some have undertaken(or will soon undertake) structural reforms. To date, few attempts havebeen made systematically to bring together and assess reform experience fromboth regions of the continent. This analytical gap, and the potential benefitsfrom such an exercise, provides the fundamental rationale for this study. 7This comparative analysis is based on detailed case studies in nine countriesof ESA and WCA: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Mali in WCA; andMozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in ESA (figure 1.1).During the period 2004–08, these countries produced an average of 0.98 milliontons and accounted for 70 percent of SSA’s cotton production (1.35 milliontons during that period). In 2005/06, the nine countries in the sample togetherproduced more than 1 million tons of cotton lint, the majority of which wasexported. This figure represents 60 percent of total African production and 68percent of SSA production. The four WCA countries accounted for 70 percentof total production of countries in our sample in 2005/06. 8 Figure 1.2 showsaverage cotton production for major African cotton producers during 2004–08(including the nine countries analyzed in this study).Each case study involved a literature review plus a two-week visit to thecountry 9 by researchers who already had several years of experience in the sector.In addition to compiling standard information on the historical background,6 DAVID TSCHIRLEY