The steering committee of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)-Federation internationale de football association (FIFA) Cotton Initiative recently pledged to intensify work to deliver concrete results for African cotton-producing countries, notably the Cotton Four (C4)—Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali—plus Cote d’Ivoire.

At its first meeting since the launch of the ‘Partenariat pour le Coton’ at the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in February, the committee welcomed two new partners—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO)—as its members.

The ‘Partenariat pour le Coton’, unveiled by WTO director general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and FIFA president Gianni Infantino on February 25, aims at strengthening the WTO-FIFA cotton partnership and support African countries' participation in cotton value chains.

The participants at the meeting took stock of the progress made thus far and, in particular, assessed the work in West Africa by CMIA, an internationally recognised standard for sustainable cotton, a WTO release said.

They exchanged views on possible actions that would help drive future measures and investment in the cotton-to-textile production chains in Western Africa and improve economic returns for these countries.

IAEA and ILO offered an overview of how their areas of work can support and be integrated into the scope of the technical work for an analysis of the cotton sector in the C4 plus countries.

The next such meeting is scheduled to take place in Cotonou, Benin, in early June this year.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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