African textile producers and exporters are reeling from the impact of new World Trade Organisation rules opening up to free market forces a sector previously protected for more than 30 years. January 2005 marked the expiration of a quota system in industrial nations which, as a side effect, had provided a ready market for textiles and apparel from poor African and other developing countries.

The result is that more than 250,000 jobs have been lost in Africa, affecting more than another million family members, reports the International Textile Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF). Most jobs have been lost in Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, Nigeria, Ghana, Mauritius, Zambia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia and Kenya. The ITGLWF is calling on African governments to convene an urgent continental conference on the future of the clothing, textile and footwear industries so that governments, trade unions and producers can develop plans to respond to the current crisis, increase efficiency, attract investment and improve workers’ welfare.

During the MFA, textile companies from the major Asian producers set up subsidiaries in less developed countries such as Lesotho, a country that enjoys duty-free access to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000. As a result, textiles and clothing became Lesotho’s economic mainstay, and at one point the industry employed 56,000 workers, accounting for virtually every manufacturing job in the country.