Cotton: Africa exports up to 81% in raw form and loses $7.6 billion in textiles

Africa produced approximately 7.5% of the world's cotton in 2022, but exports the vast majority without processing it: 70% of exports are in raw form according to UNCTAD, and up to 81% for sub-Saharan Africa according to an estimate by the International Cotton Advisory Committee cited by UNESCO. This disparity is at the heart of an op-ed published on October 7, 2026, on AllAfrica by analyst Daniel T. Makokera, as World Cotton Day approaches.

The result is reflected in the trade balance. The continent exported $15.5 billion worth of textiles and imported $23.1 billion, a deficit of $7.6 billion, according to UNESCO data from the World Bank's WITS database. In other words: Africa sells the fiber and buys back the clothing.

3.5 million producers, value captured elsewhere

Cotton is a major cash crop in 37 of the 54 African countries and supports about 3.5 million farmers, of whom only 17% are women, the same op-ed reports. In the continent's garment factories, the ratio is reversed: women make up 70% to 90% of the formal workforce. The sector is therefore both a matter of land and a matter of female industrial employment.

The African Development Bank estimates that mastering the entire cotton value chain—ginning, spinning, weaving, manufacturing, branding—could multiply the economic value created by seven, representing a 600% increase.

The Beninese precedent

Benin, where cotton accounts for about 12% to 13% of the economy, is cited as a demonstration. The Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone now processes nearly 30% of Beninese cotton on-site and produces 7 to 10 million finished garments per year. Its Deputy Director General, Faki Adje, puts forward a target of 300,000 formal industrial jobs by 2030—a stated ambition, not an achieved result.

The market already exists on the continent: sales of clothing and footwear in sub-Saharan Africa approached $31 billion in 2020, and the share of active online shoppers rose from 13% in 2017 to 28% in 2021, or some 334 million users. However, intra-African textile trade is capped at $2.7 billion, about 8% of continental imports. The AfCFTA is expected to increase this by about 11%, an effect slowed by border delays, incompatible standards, and high transport costs.

Hence the author's proposal: to make World Cotton Day an "annual industrial audit" rather than a celebration, by measuring each year the share of locally processed cotton, factory utilization rates, the predictability of farmers' income, and the role of women in the sector. The cotton field, he writes in essence, must be the beginning of an industrial story, not the end of an export story.