Fresh plan seeks to revive East Africa’s troubled textiles sector
A cotton processing factory. Weak farmer organisations, high costs of production, inadequate quality inputs and overreliance on rain-fed production are to blame for the sector’s downfall in East Africa. PHOTO | FILE
In 1994, as a young boy growing up in Siaya, western Kenya, I used to see a truck from Kisumu Cotton Mills (Kicomi) — then the region’s only ginnery — drive into our school field every Monday, to collect cotton from farmers.
Cotton was then a valued cash crop that sustained thousands of families in the area. But in about four years, the truck stopped coming. And so did the farmers. They said it was no longer a viable crop. My grandfather, a cotton farmer then, abandoned the crop and switched to growing maize. Many of his peers did the same.
