Africa’s textile and apparel industry sits at an interesting intersection. The continent has many of the raw materials, labour resources, entrepreneurial proficiencies and consumer markets required to grow an internationally competitive textile economy. Across parts of West and Central Africa, much of the cotton is still exported in raw form, prompting major regional initiatives to mobilise investment in spinning, weaving, garment manufacturing and logistics.
At the same time, other parts of the continent have developed vertically integrated production systems serving international markets. Today, African designers and brands are gaining global recognition, with traditional fabrics such as Kente, Adire, and Bokolonfini being reimagined for contemporary fashion.
In Kenya, a separate value chain is developing around short cotton fibres, yarn sweepings and textile offcuts. Cotton has long been a cash crop in Uganda’s rural economy. Farmers in Uganda are organising sales through groups, cooperatives and direct relationships with ginneries in an effort to secure known buyers, reduce losses between the farm and the ginnery and retain more of the value of each harvest. The shift is taking place within a cotton industry that supports an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 smallholder households across more than 75 Ugandan districts.
Circumstantial evidence proposes that even in countries with reasonably vibrant apparel industries, such as Mauritius, SMEs often find it more difficult to maintain competitiveness than larger firms when having to comply with double transformation requirements. If a double-transformation approach is considered, full cumulation might be crucial in ensuring that preferences applying to the Continental Free Trade Area remain commercially valuable and do not excessively hamper the strategies of African firms.
In 2025, total African trade reached approximately US$1.4 trillion, with intra-African trade accounting for roughly 18 per cent of total trade, supported by the ongoing implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). AfCFTA aims at boosting intra-African trade by providing a comprehensive and mutually beneficial trade agreement among the member states. The Agreement covers trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property rights, and competition policy. Trade under the AfCFTA began on 1 January 2021.
AfCFTA is forcing manufacturers to restructure supply chains toward regional fibre sourcing to qualify for tariff exemptions, compressing lead times and rewiring procurement patterns across the continent. For textiles and apparel, nevertheless, the most important issue is not just whether tariffs drop. It is how Africa expresses an “African product”. Rules of Origin (RoO) regulate whether cotton, yarn, fabric, garments and other textile products are eligible for preferential treatment when moving from one African country to another. This makes the AfCFTA possibly more than a free-trade pact. It could become the governing framework around which an African textile regional value chain is built.
Africa’s Textile Contradiction: Cotton-Rich but Textile-Poor
Africa’s textile paradox starts with its place in the cotton value chain. Without a doubt, the continent is a significant producer and exporter of cotton, predominantly in West and Central Africa. Hitherto, much of the economic value created by cotton is captured outside the continent. UNCTAD data indicate that around 70% of cotton exports from Africa are primary intermediates embodying limited value addition, such as cotton fibres (whether carded or not); only 12% take the form of yarn, and 18% of cotton fabrics.
Conversely, some 12% of Africa’s cotton imports are accounted for by primary intermediates, 16% by yarn, and as much as 72% by cotton fabrics. Intra-African trade accounts for only 15% of cotton exports and 12% of imports and for 10% of the continent’s apparel exports and 17% of its imports. This data makes known a fundamental structural challenge, i.e., Africa exports the commencement of the textile chain and imports substantial shares of its middle and higher-value stages. The costs extend past trade statistics. For instance, Cameroon produces about 350,000 tonnes of seed cotton annually under the supervision of the Cotton Development Company, SODECOTON, making it Africa’s fifth-largest producer. Yet little of the crop is processed locally. But in Cameroon, only about 5% of the country’s cotton is processed domestically.
AfCFTA’s Trade Facilitation provisions already recognise many of these challenges. The agreement provides for customs automation, advanced exchange of information, electronic documentation, single-window systems, coordinated border management, joint controls, and one-stop border posts, among other measures. It also recognises the need to reduce the cost of doing business and the volume of paperwork associated with intra-African trade. The problem, therefore, is whether that framework is being translated consistently into the commercial reality experienced by African manufacturers.
This problem is particularly significant for the cotton, textile and apparel sector. Textile production increasingly depends on regional specialisation. Cotton may be produced in one country, spun in another, transformed into fabric elsewhere and ultimately manufactured into garments in another market. The economic logic of such a system depends on inputs moving predictably across borders.
For Africa’s textile industry, it is an industrial competitiveness issue because AfCFTA may remove tariff barriers, but trade facilitation must remove the operational friction that prevents African businesses from taking advantage of the market.
What AfCFTA Means for Textiles and Apparel?
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is one of the flagship projects of Agenda 2063 Africa’s development frameworks. The AfCFTA was approved by the 18th ordinary session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2012, which adopted the decision to establish an African Continental Free Trade Area and the Action Plan for boosting intra-African trade as a key initiative whose implementation would promote socio-economic growth and development.
As part of its mandate, the AfCFTA is to eliminate trade barriers and boost intra-Africa trade. In particular, it is to advance trade in value-added production across all service sectors of the African economy. The AfCFTA will contribute to establishing regional value chains in Africa, enabling investment and job creation.
The current landscape of African textiles and apparel also relates to the types of firms in the sector, their investment origins and ownership. Typically, investor interest has been driven by market access through preferential trade regimes, which is temporary by nature, with limited links to investments in textiles that would create opportunities for linkages and spillovers to pave the way for industrialisation.
In East Africa, especially Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, these include Asian-African owners, usually owning a single operation geared towards the domestic market or subcontracting for larger firms. Nonetheless, there are cases of successful scaling-up from domestic to the regional level. For instance, diaspora investors in Mauritius through the Franco-Mauritian business elite and Madagascar successfully managed to break into export markets using historical, cultural, and other linkages.
Beyond the above types, retailers such as Woolworths have also been key in generating demand for African textiles and apparel products. Their large market power can be leveraged to develop supplier capabilities and thus could play a key role as regional value chain (RVC) drivers. While distinguishing firms this way helps understand different commercial interests and goals, groups are not always discrete. Rather, they overlap, with potential differences from one country to another.
Rules of Origin: The Thread Holding the System Together
Essentially, Rules of Origin (RoO) are a passport for goods. Rules of Origin are at the cornerstone of what it means for goods to be labelled “Made in Africa”. They are a set of technical requirements that define goods’ eligibility for preferential tariffs on imports in a free trade area. Rules of origin are situated at the nexus of trade and industrial policy.
Therefore, RoO describes the transformation a product must undergo in the region—such as the share of value added—to enjoy preferential market access. They are used to prevent goods from non-member countries from entering through a low-tariff country and being transhipped duty-free to another member country. Rules of origin that are too restrictive can negate the preferential market access intended by the free trade agreement and prevent global supply chains from functioning.
The contentious nature of the Rules of Origin negotiations reflects the complexities of the sector, varying existing target markets, and different economic and political ambitions for the sector. In broad terms, countries in West and Central Africa favour general RoOs similar to those in East Asia, whereas Egypt, Kenya and South Africa advocate for product-specific RoOs.
However, national markets are often too small, investment requirements are too large, and industrial capabilities are too fragmented to support fully integrated value chains within individual borders. This reality has shaped one of AfCFTA’s most important concepts: regional cumulation, which allows value added in multiple African countries to count collectively toward origin requirements. Regional cumulation introduces a different model.
While regional value chains depend on efficient transport corridors, reliable logistics networks, harmonised customs procedures, digital trade systems, payment infrastructure, and coordinated industrial policies. They require trust between countries, predictable regulations, and mechanisms that facilitate rather than hinder the movement of goods across borders.
This is why RoO under AfCFTA should be viewed not just as trade rules but as instruments of industrial architecture because they establish the framework through which regional production systems can emerge. The success of AfCFTA’s textile ambitions will therefore depend largely on whether regional cumulation evolves from a policy concept into an operational industrial reality.
From Cotton to Clothing: Building a Continental Value Chain
The textiles and apparel global value chain (GVC) is generally considered to be buyer-driven, thus helping explain many of the characteristics seen above. There are a limited number of buyers or lead firms driving the distribution of productive activities and investment decisions within the value chain.
Until now, the general trend has been for firms to insert themselves in the GVC and work with foreign firms. This allows access to modern technology to become internationally competitive and specialise and access lucrative international markets such as the US or the EU. While this may be changing with recent disruptions to trade preferences and the trend towards ‘nearshoring’ and rising production costs in East Asia, the overall dynamics will still be buyer-driven.
The ultimate test of trade facilitation is whether it changes the economics of regional production. For Africa’s textile opportunity, that change means producing more finished garments and developing connected regional value chains. While Cotton can be produced in one economy and spun into yarn in another. The yarn can be converted into fabric elsewhere, while dyeing and finishing can take place in another industrial cluster. The final garment can then be assembled in a country with competitive apparel manufacturing capabilities.
The potential economic benefits of this model are significant. AfCFTA-related research has identified clothing and textiles as a priority value chain with potential to support industrial transformation, competitiveness and employment. Regional value chains can also provide firms with access to new technologies, knowledge and capital.
But the model depends on one deceptively simple condition; the inputs must be able to move. If a shipment of yarn becomes trapped at a border, the spinning mill’s output cannot reach its customer. If fabric is delayed, garment production can stop. If finished garments cannot reach the destination market predictably, the manufacturer may lose the buyer. The border therefore becomes part of the production system.
This changes how trade facilitation should be evaluated and reveals why regional value chains can remain underdeveloped even where tariff preferences exist. A garment manufacturer may technically have preferential access to an African market. But if sourcing fabric regionally introduces unpredictable delays while importing fabric from outside the continent provides more reliable delivery, the manufacturer has a commercial incentive to remain globally rather than regionally integrated. Resolving that paradox should therefore be one of the central priorities of AfCFTA implementation.
The Second-Hand Clothing Challenge
Current market dynamics may mean that countries have to accept the imports of second-hand clothing in the short to medium term future. Given the vast imports of second-hand clothing, there is a need for a concerted strategy on these imports.
It is also important to highlight the work of SMEs emerging to tackle the issue of waste in the fashion industry and the environmental pollution it results in for African countries. Commendable initiatives like Rummage Studios and Africa Collect Textiles focus on upcycling unusable garments, transforming discarded clothing into new, valuable products. They provide opportunities for local artisans to create marketable goods while supporting environmentally sustainable practices. These initiatives address the growing problem of textile waste while empowering communities by fostering creativity, creating jobs, and promoting a circular economy.
A successful AfCFTA textile policy cannot simply attempt to eliminate second-hand clothing. The deeper objective should be to make African-produced garments adequately competitive in price, quality, variety, and distribution. The continental market could aid realise economies of scale.
A Strategic Road Map for an African Textile Market
Experts highlight the heterogeneity of the textiles and apparel sector in the continent. As stakeholders in the industry – whether they are firms, policy-makers, development or implementation partners, or civil society organisations – think through ways to leverage the AfCFTA for a continental textiles and apparel RVC, the following fundamentals appear critical for shaping discussions.
- Preferential market access remains a key consideration for foreign investors in the African textiles and apparel sector. Without AGOA, most firms would not be competitive, and countries such as Kenya and Lesotho would exit the market. This has major repercussions for the African industry. While countries such as Kenya are banking on a bilateral FTA agreement with the US as insurance, a broader solution needs to be sought for other countries. In this regard, the AfCFTA presents an opportunity to enhance intra-African market access and foster the development of a ‘Made in Africa’ brand, positioning the region as an alternative or complementary market to global value chains
- Strengthening regional trade within the AfCFTA framework can reduce dependency on external preferential trade agreements while also supporting industrialisation and economic integration. Access to export markets remains crucial for local firms to gain knowledge, adopt new technologies, and collaborate with foreign companies that control global production networks. This, in turn, helps build domestic capabilities and competitiveness in ways that a purely domestic focus cannot achieve.
- Developing Regional Value Chains (RVCs): A strategic approach to enhancing Africa’s textile and apparel sector may involve developing differentiated regional value chains (RVCs) that target external and intra-African markets. Different regions can leverage their existing productive capacities and strengths to create specialised RVCs.
In conclusion, the most important AfCFTA textile rule may be the principle underlying all of them: that Africa’s productive volumes should no longer be treated as inaccessible national assets, but as unified parts of a sole economic market. The loom is being accumulated. The success of the AfCFTA will determine whether Africa can finally weave the threads together.
