In May, an Indian trade mission, led by Mr. Ravi Bangar, the deputy permanent representative of India to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), paid a visit to Mr. Jubril Martins-Kuye, Nigeria’s Minister for Commerce and Industry. One of the major issues they discussed was the possibility of India helping Nigeria to revitalise its textile industry. Shortly after the meeting, the minister directed both the National Cotton Association of Nigeria and the Nigeria Textile Manufacturers’ Association to put a paper together, giving specific details on how the government could help the textile industry.

This paper, it is presumed, will form the basis of what the involvement of India in the sector would be. This has not yet been done, but it seems like a good time to pause and examine what led to a situation in which an industry that was the largest employer in the manufacturing sector of the country became one that desperately needs help. It is by doing this exercise that one might begin to think of what could be done to bring it back from the brink.

The not-so-rosy past
The first modern textile mill in Nigeria, Kaduna Textile Mill, was started in 1956 in Kaduna, northern Nigeria. The primary reason for setting up the mill was to process the cotton that was being produced in the northern part of the country. By the 1970s and the 1980s, the Nigerian textile industry had grown to become the third largest in Africa.

A report by the United Nations University (UNU) states that in 1987, there were 37 textile firms in the country, operating 716,000 spindles and 17,541 looms. This was the golden period of Nigeria’s textile industry. Between 1985 and 1991, it recorded an annual growth of 67%, and as at 1991, it employed about 25% of workers in the manufacturing sector. Although all this is good news, it needs to be viewed with the structure of the global textile trade in mind: it was the period of the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA).

The MFA was a system of quota that could be imposed by developed countries on the amount of textile products developing countries could export to them. This was interpreted largely as a protection of the United States’ textile industry from China. The MFA was replaced by the WTO’s Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) in 1995. Under these agreements, the textile industry was brought into full compliance with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) rules, and all quota restrictions were rolled back by January 1, 2005. The quota restrictions were not applicable to some countries, one of which was Nigeria.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Nigeria’s textile industry received a lot of foreign investment. The UNU report for instance notes that in 1991, two companies that its report focused on were either directly owned by Indian investors or were subsidiaries of Indian-owned companies: Aflon Nigeria PLC was owned by Afprint Nigeria Plc, which was in turn part of the Indian Kewalram/Chenrai group. Spintex Mills (Nigeria) Limited was also an Indian company. During the same period, United Nigeria Textile Plc (UNTPLC), a Kaduna-based company that was established in 1964, was bought by CHA Textiles, a Chinese company. It has been suggested that the reason the number of textile companies in Nigeria grew during this period was because Nigeria was not under the MFA quota restrictions.

Decline of the industry
In an interview with Nigeria’s Daily Independent newspaper, the first Nigerian Group Managing Director of Kewalram/Chanrai, Mr. Victor Eburajolo, blamed the decline of the textile industry on the hasty accession of Nigeria to the WTO in 1995. According to him, in accordance with WTO rules, Nigeria had to remove any protection of the local textile industry. He argued that it would have been better for the country to secure special arrangements with the WTO, such that the local textile industry would be protected until it was surer on its feet.

While there is certainly some truth to this, there were other factors that contributed to the decline of the industry. One of these was the ending of the MFA and the accession of China to the WTO, both of which happened within four years of each other.

Until 2005, when the MFA ended, there was a quota on the amount of textile that China could export. A report on a Chinese website, written in November of 2001, a month before China joined the WTO, discussed the benefits of membership for China. It says that Chinese textile manufacturers believed that China’s accession to the WTO would come with opportunities for the industry. One of this would be that China’s membership would encourage foreign companies to set-up shop in China. Through that Chinese companies would be able to learn ‘advanced designing, marketing and management’. This, it was suggested, would be part of the preparation for the removal of the import quota on Chinese textile products, under the MFA.

As we now know, this has proved to be quite an astute observation. Looking back, it would seem that between 2001 (when China became a member of the WTO) and 2005 (when the quota system was removed) Chinese companies were able to hone their skills in textile production and international marketing.

Before the MFA expired, the United States introduced the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), an initiative that opened up the American market to African countries. While there are many things to complain about concerning AGOA, one could observe that before the expiration of the MFA, textile products were one of the fastest growing African exports to the US. However, by the time the quotas were lifted, Chinese exports increased rapidly and proved to be stronger competition than African companies could handle.

According to a presentation made to the US-China Commission by Mr. Princeton Lyman, a former United States ambassador to Nigeria, African countries suffered from the increase in exports from the Chinese textile industry on two fronts. Cheap exports from China were undermining local textile industries. At the same time, the growth of Chinese exports to the United States was making it almost impossible for African countries to compete with China for the US market.

The Nigerian textile industry was one of those that suffered especially because of the first point. When I spoke to traders in the popular Dantokpa Market in Cotonou, they said that Nigeria used to supply them with good quality wax-resist textile, popularly called ankara in Nigeria. However, in the early 2000s, cheap imitations of these products were being produced and exported from China to West Africa. Some would even be slapped with Made-in-Nigeria or Made-as-Nigeria labels and then sold in Nigeria.

These days, although there is a ban on the importation of textile products into Nigeria the products still manage to find their way into the country. They are first imported into Benin or Togo, from where they would either be taken to Niger before being smuggled into Nigeria through its northern borders, or they would simply be smuggled directly into the country through its borders with Benin. Some of the people I talked to in Cotonou say that several containers of Chinese products are regularly smuggled into Nigeria through Benin.

This should not in any way be seen as an indictment of China, but as a failure of policies on the part of the Nigerian government. For instance, part of what this has shown is that a country that cannot police its borders should not rely, almost exclusively, on import prohibition as a trade policy instrument. Apart from this, even in the early 1990s, it had become apparent that there were some problems with the Nigerian textile industry.

The UNU report pointed to the difficulty of access to finance. Many of the companies could not afford to take loans at the very high lending rates (sometimes more than 45%) in the country. It was also difficult to get foreign exchange and deal with inflation problems, in a situation where a lot of the cotton and other raw materials used were imported. There was also the poor state of transportation, power and other infrastructure that were needed by the industry. All these factors contributed to the death of the industry.

Resuscitative measures
Shortly before the end of the term of Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, there was an initiative by the federal government to raise 70-billion naira through bonds of five-year duration. The money was named the Textile Development Fund, and it was to be lent to cotton growers and textile manufacturers through the Nigerian Export Import Bank (NEXIM). However, in July last year, it was reported that the United Bank of Africa, which was to help the federal government to market the bonds, was unable to do so.

This has been the state of affairs until the flurry of activities and the long list of commentaries that have followed the visit of the Indian trade delegation. First of all, I think it is a good thing that we are now talking about the textile industry again, and with some seriousness. Although nobody yet knows what the involvement of the Indians would be, or the form that it would take, it is clear that the problems that led to the decline of the industry have not suddenly disappeared.

The financing of the industry would clearly have to be taken seriously, if not through the issuance of the kinds of bonds that the government tried to issue through the United Bank for Africa, then through other means. Many industry insiders also complain about the lack of Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO or black oil), which is required by the industry. This, to say the least, is scandalous in an oil-producing country. I would imagine that this is one thing that could be taken care of, given some will to do so. It is almost redundant these days to mention power, transportation and other basic infrastructure. But yes, these are going to be crucial to any resuscitative attempts.

I think there is the potential to grow the textile industry, with some government determination and a push by actors in the textile industry. It should not be forgotten that under AGOA, the United States market is open to Nigeria. Therefore, anyone who invests in production for export can take advantage of that. Nigeria is also a large market, and if one is to take any lesson from the patronage of smuggled products, it is that there is a demand for textile products. This would indicate that production for local consumption could be a profitable venture.

All this optimism is hinged on the belief that the Nigerian government and the textile industry in general are willing to work together to produce an environment in which this is possible. The involvement of the Indians might just be the catalyst that is needed.

This issue came up in a discussion I had a couple of days ago with a black American here in Philadelphia. He too told me about everyday racism in America.

While I was in New York a few days ago, I observed many black people around Grand Central Station and Times Square, people who looked like they were in really bad shape. A Nigerian who lives in Philadelphia (you have to understand that there is a difference between an African and a Black American) told me that a walk downtown in any major American city would show the disproportionate number of black people who are homeless, relative to other ethnic categories. Many walk up to passers-by to beg for money.

Different studies have shown that there is an overwhelming proportional majority of black people in American prisons. Apart from the fact that racial tension that is most often bottled up explodes once in a while, there are issues of institutional racism. As an example, Charles M. Blows, a New York Times op-ed columnist, points, in a recent column, to the fact that the current financial crisis has dealt an especially harsher blow on blacks in comparison with other ethnic demographies. He cites a research report on the subprime mortgage problem: ‘blacks were the most likely to get higher-priced subprime loans, leading to higher foreclosure rates.’

This is in the face of America’s first black presidency. Indeed, Mr. Blows observes that there seems to be a backlash of sorts. As he points out, there are more and more evidence of overt racism in the country, evidenced by the increase in hate crimes. Google searches also seem to bear this out. The internet search company has even issued an advert that is partly an apology and partly an explanation of the technology that makes certain images of certain persons appear higher on the search list.

The easy thing to do is to blame Black Americans for their plight. Some Black Americans describe this as ‘tough love’ – the attitude and belief that it is the fault of black people for not lifting themselves out of poverty. The argument of Black Americans who are against ‘tough love’ is that one needs to consider the rigged structure that produces such outcomes. In other words, institutional racism is very often responsible for the preponderance of blacks in American prisons, for instance.

I do not live in the US – I am only here on a short visit – and I cannot begin to pretend that I have more than an anthropologist’s first impressions. I do however find it disheartening not only that the world’s richest country has a lot of homeless people, but that most of the homeless belong in one category.

This whole experience reminds me of an episode at a programme on Cultural Diplomacy that I attended in Berlin. After a talk by the ambassador of Lesotho to Germany, a Black American who was in the audience stood up to ask a question about what African countries think of the racial inequality and discrimination in the United States of America. He specifically asked whether African countries are thinking of possible ways of assisting other black people around the world.

My response to him would be that racial inequality is not limited to the borders of particular countries. It stretches across the globe, and has often resulted in Africa being imagined as the Other of the European/American/White Self. Besides, how could African countries even begin to think of doing anything about racial inequality within the borders of countries they hope will give them one form of assistance or the other?

We had our own 1989 in Africa. It started in Benin. Mathieu Kerekou’s military regime put out a press release a few weeks after the Berlin Wall came down. The regime declared that Marxism-Leninism was no longer going to be the official ideology of the state. A National Conference followed a few months later in February 1990. Other countries, mostly from Francophone Africa, also convened national conferences – Congo in February 1990, Gabon in March 1990, Zaire (now DRC) in February 1991, Togo in July/August 1991, Niger in July 1992, and Chad in January 1993. These countries were in a fiscal mess by then.

Enter Structural Adjustment Programme.

Washington Consensus, a term coined in 1989, started reigning supreme. The way countries in fiscal nightmares and economic woes could get out was by the adoption of structural adjustments programmes sponsored by the Washington-D.C-based, Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and the IMF. Under structural adjustment programmes, the first thing that had to go was as much of government spending as possible. Privatisation of government-owned companies and the deregulation of government-controlled sectors followed. If these were not done, the states would not get help from the Bretton Woods institutions.

African states were advised to withdraw from the provision of social services. In actually fact, by then, they could not afford to provide those services anymore, due to the inefficiency of the government, and/or corruption. It was not only communism that lost when the Wall fell; like Ian Buruma rightly pointed out in a recent article, social democrats lost the Marxist ideological basis for the ideals they were promoting.

It was also about then that the World Bank discovered that ‘civil society’ could be a vehicle for development. Defined in the most inclusive sense, civil society included non-governmental organizations. Development aid for the ‘people’ was channeled through them, the ‘third sector’. If one could not get a job with the government or a private company, one either started an NGO if one was resourceful enough, or one went to work for one.

Things first became much worse, especially with the withdrawal of the state from the provision of many social services. But people adjusted; and then things got better. Companies that were ‘properly’ privatized did not perform much worse than private companies in the developed world. Same with companies that were started in deregulated sectors of the economy.

The loss of the moral basis of socialist ideals along with the fall of the Wall meant that the death of the African Welfare State was without even a whimper. Francis Fukuyama called it The End of History. States learnt that they either jumped on the bandwagon of neo-liberal policies or go the way Zimbabwe went soon after.

In Africa of today, we have a wide range of states – from rentier states to client states – all with a more or less capitalist outlook, most pseudo-democratic. Totalitarian states of the 80s had to look for ways to legitimize their rule by adopting a semblance of multi-party democracy.

Today, poverty and lack of security are still huge problems; corruption is still a major issue; public infrastructure is in a mess. Africa needs progressive, modern, outward looking democratic states. If that is the kind of state we want, this is a good time to have a debate on what their role should be.

Plus there is something about the self that makes one look out for others with ones’ identity markers. Therefore, I noticed, walking down one of the busiest roads in Uppsala, Sweden, that I could not find any other black face.

The first thing I ‘became’ was a black person. Not long after, I became African.

It did not take me too long to meet other Africans. Some of them were students like me, others asylum seekers. Scanning those faces on my first walk down the Uppsala road was not for fun. I knew that I would need help ‘getting into’ the country, and who else to help one get in smoothly than one who might have had the same experiences as one? And how to tell that someone is like one if not by their looks?

The Africans I met helped me quickly transform myself from a black person into an African. It would have been different had it been Berlin, where I now live. The black face could either be an African or an American GI (America has military bases in Germany). I do not need to point to the different treatments one might receive if one were either of the two.

In any case, in Uppsala, I became an African. Till now, the story has been about me and people who look like me. Let me add to the mix the subtle things that made me an Other to the Swedish Self. First is the process of being made into the other. Simple things like being spoken to in English and not Swedish, although very welcome, meant that they ‘knew’ that I was not a Swede. That is if the way I looked did not already give that away. Or the fact that one of my housemates asked me, after he had had one bottle too many, whether we have roads in Africa. That seals it, right? How much more other can one be if one does not even have roads? Well, you can also add the issue of living on trees. That came later.

But the moment I became Nigerian was the moment one person asked where I was from and I replied Nigeria. I noticed the change on his face and asked what the matter was. He replied that there was a time their media warned them against Nigerian mails – 419 letters. That was what Nigeria was for him, a country from which scam letters and emails originate. I patiently explained to him that Yes, a few Nigerians are involved in it, but No, not all Nigerians are; they were only a few. From then on, I had to deal with the annoying fact of having to explain this to people. The fact that one out of every five African is a Nigerian became part of the arsenal. If one is not careful, one could end up living ones life defending one’s Nigerian self.

All the aforementioned could happen in the space of one day, or even a few hours.

Therefore, when one finds that it is Nigerians outside the country who fight the strongest against the negative portrayal of Nigerians in the global media – in adverts, movies or in the news – it is because they are the ones who have to deal with the effects of that portrayal.

A vendor sits in his street kiosk - Luc Gnago/Reuters

I intended to boycott the media frenzy on Obama´s second visit to Africa as over 25,000 children died around the world on the same day but “We don’t need Obama to show us how to make Kenya a great country” by Barrack Muluka writing in Nairobi’s Standard put a stop to that foolishness. His rant, “we would not crave a visit by some foreigner whose existence we did not even know of ten years ago”. Elsewhere expectations were enormously high as the White House made sure Internet and mobile phone users around the world got involved with the visit to Ghana using Face and Twit!

The importance of President Obama’s visit to Ghana was not lost on the folks at Google as they teamed up with the Ministry of Tourism in Ghana to create a special site for President Obama’s visit. Shame the  ajax.googleapis.com application was awfully slow but the numbers game showed Obama was the only party on the web. Mainstream media not to be outdone contributed an overkill of analysts but without any worthy of mention as blogs took the play and the debate continues today.

There were many one line condemnations of Obama’s shallow and simplistic speech from a surprising number of people including Nigerian Lawyer and human rights activist, Femi Falana who thought it was a huge embarrassment to the African continent and black people. But the Glaring Omission on Nigerian Curiosity proved quite popular with a lot of thought provoking comments.  The updated version clarified that “Obama could freely ‘scold’ Africa, he neglected to acknowledge the historical role played by American government and even certain businesses in creating some of the problems Africa now faces.”

Solomonsydelle’s theme is repeated  in Obama’s Ghana Speech Under whelms on GlobalVoices. Non seulement que l’Afrique est le dernier continent qu’il visites malgre ses origines, perhaps they should have left out the cringe-worthy label, Obama Africa. I also enjoyed Obama In Nigeria, Oh Sorry, Ghana! on Nairaland, “I guess he doesn’t want to be kidnapped  by Militants” a comment quipped.

“After the illustrious son of Africa, Barack Obama has left Ghana on the July 12, 2009; I decided to call him because the sermon he delivered to Ghanaians and Africans was too far beyond my comprehension. As a matter of fact, he gave me enough time and this was what ensued between us. That was how “Comment: My Telephone Conversation with Obama!” by Joy Online’s Abdulai Hanan R. Confidence who went over the speech line by line. “So, is that the reason why you chose Ghana because we have just discovered oil? Or the Africom matters?” Highly recommended!

For Richard B. Muhammad, “President Barack Obama’s pilgrimage to Africa’s first modern independent nation may be one of the most significant trips to the continent by any U.S. political figure”, however, President patronizing was how Nigerian social justice activist and blogger saw the visit in nibl. Sokari Ekine aka Black Looks, pointed out the contradictions in Obama’s denial of the destructive role of the West played in Africa. Sokari also revealed that the Ghana speech lacked substance in her review on Pambazuka News.

The enormous historic and symbolic visit was reduced to Obama: Ghana’s Gain, Nigeria’s loss by Ghana Pundit who added that Former Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu also listened to Obama speak.  Not the miracle speech and I was almost annoyed with the bellyaching was how Akín began but concluded that the speech struck the right balance. President Obama in Ghana. Why not Nigeria? by Ghana based Nigerian blogger and web entrepreneur – Oluniyi David Ajao added that “The President of the United States is at liberty to decide which countries to visit or not to visit, and in what order he visits them.”

Is Obama Africa’s saviour? by Reuter’s Mpho Majoro finished with the question common to most of blogshere. But should Africans in any case be looking to Obama – or anyone from outside – to solve the continent’s problems? Or is there more that Africans should be doing themselves to improve their lives? In the end, are we still bitter or have we learnt something from this tech Savvy Obama Ghana speech in English, French, Swahili, Arabic and Portuguese? Thanks to all the contributors but did the message get home? How many African countries are planning to sow the seeds of information using technology?

In 1985, around 85,000 people visited the tropical country; that number has now skyrocketed to around 600,000. In June of this year, the Ghana Tourist Board launched a promotional initiative with the aim of attracting 1 million annual visitors by the end of 2012. – Forbes.com – Obama Went To Ghana. Should You?

To those that missed the performance, A New Moment of Promise in Africa is at the White House, USA.