The Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Alamine OUSMANE MEY, presided over the first session of the National Strategic Orientation Committee (CNOS) of the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (PMA) of the Cotton-Textile-Manufacturing Sector on 4 May 2023 in Yaounde, in the presence of the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Cameroon. The event was attended by technical and financial partners and representatives of the private and public sectors.

The first session of the National Strategic Orientation Committee (CNOS) of the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership for the Cotton-Textile-Garment sector is part of the import-substitution policy promoted by the Government of Cameroon, with the aim of adding value to the ‘Made in Cameroon’. According to the Minister of the Economy, this involves mobilising all the institutional, economic and financial facilities needed to encourage the emergence of micro-industries and small and medium-sized industries, which generate jobs and are capable of adding value locally.
Such an initiative could enable companies in this sector to gradually win back the local market, contribute to the export of finished products and, for example, help reduce the import bill for second-hand clothes, estimated at more than 38 billion CFA francs a year. In his opening remarks, the Minister of the Economy pointed out that the Cotton – Textiles – Garment Sector is highly under-industrialised. Less than 5% of locally-produced fibres are processed by local industries and crafts, and the domestic market is largely dominated by imports, which weigh down the trade balance.

For instance, 88% of the loincloth market come from imports from Asia, while local producers control less than 10% of this market. Yet more than 2 million people in Cameroon depend on cotton in some way and the sector employs around 475,000 people. Cotton exports also generate substantial foreign exchange earnings.
Cotton production makes a substantial contribution to overall production. Similarly, cotton-related activities account for 6% of non-oil exports, 14.1% of agricultural export GDP and are the source of over 60% of the net agricultural cash income of people living in the northern part of the country, according to the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development. The Multi-Stakeholder Partnership is therefore a good response from the government and its partners. It was set up under the joint impetus of the Competitiveness Committee and German Cooperation through GIZ, to improve the productivity and competitiveness of the cotton/textile/manufacturing value chain in all sectors (sustainable cotton production, handicrafts and the textile industry).
Two presentations were made during the first session of the National Strategic Orientation Committee of the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership for this sector. The first introduced the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership sas a tool for sustaining the Procoton project, and the second the strategic orientation project for the Cotton-Textile-Garment Multi-stakeholders Partnership.