Fears Surface Over Privatizing Cotton In Mali

Bamako, Mali (AHN) - An attempt to create a better-managed cotton sector in Mali, so farmers there could compete with cotton farmers in India or Brazil, is set to go with uncertain results because of changed conditions now, World Bank officials say.

The Mali national cotton company, Malian Company for Textile Development (CMDT), is being privatized and the bids for tender were just sent out. But after working since the 1990s to privatize cotton production in Mali, World Bank officials say they are afraid that none of the conditions that would make the venture successful is in place now.

Mali is one of the biggest cotton producers in sub-Saharan Africa, and up to 4 million residents earn some part of their livelihoods from cotton. In addition, cotton accounts for one quarter of the nation's exports.

"The point of privatization was to create a better-managed cotton sector... so that Mali could start to compete with the likes of India or Brazil... but this will not happen... I am very, very pessimistic about the privatization process," Olivier Durand, agricultural specialist for the World Bank in Mali, told U.N humanitarian news agency IRIN.

The glitch in privatization comes because the CMDT and individual cotton farmers are not organized into well functioning cooperatives, and farmers have not gotten to the point that they are maintaining their fields or their equipment well enough to suit investors, according to international relief and development agency OXFAM.

Cotton farmers in Mali are organized into small cooperatives of about 12 growers. They don't have irrigation and depend on rain to grow their cotton, which is generally their only cash crop. They borrow money from the government for fertilizer, repay the loans when they sell their cotton and hope there is money left over to pay for other things they need, according to OXFAM.

But competition from the United States has lowered the price cotton brings. Rising costs for fertilizer along with declining crop yields per acre has also contributed to lower cotton profits making it difficult for farmers to repay their loans, IRIN reports.

Cotton production has dropped by 50 percent in Mali since 1998, according to official statistics IRIN reports.

About 80 percent of Mali's 200,000 small family cotton farmers live in poverty in the Sikasso, Koulikoro, Segou and Kayes regions, according to a 2007 Oxfam report.