When will Kenya learn to strike while the iron is hot

Agoa: When will Kenya strike while iron is hot?
Story by: Shreya Shah
Publication Date: 6/29/2006

The recent Agoa meeting in Washington has been a source of heated debate among Africa's trade ministers, described by some as a "matter of life and death".
The recent unveiling of a project to revamp cotton growing in eastern and central Kenya illustrates yet another example of a missed opportunity and lethargy on the Government's part.
The September, 2007, deadline stipulating that Kenya and many other Agoa targets will export textiles to the US only on condition that the cotton or fabric used be produced in Africa is no news. So why is the Government trying to revamp a long-dead industry?
What makes it certain that a Sh288 million matching grant is the way to maintain preferential access to the US market? What happens when the World Bank taps run dry? Will farmers continue growing cotton at a loss and under unfavourable conditions?
Kenya's cotton sector has been on its deathbed for almost two decades now and the late attempts to resuscitate it will do little good.
Cotton farmers stopped growing it for various reasons, which continue to be the main problems – an inefficient and corrupt marketing board, US cotton subsidies, astronomically high taxes on fertilisers, lost yields to pests, no access to high-yield genetic cotton seeds, little access to credit, poor roads in the cotton belt, absence of a regulatory and legal framework: the list is long.
It would be more prudent for Kenya not to count on textiles as a long-term solution to industrial development and job-creation. To become more internationally competitive in textiles, or any industry, for that matter, requires a host of actions but, sadly, the time for taking these actions has expired.
The biggest lesson is that there is a need for Kenya to diversify enterprises and markets and avoid over-reliance on goodwill from external policies over which we have no influence.
Shreya Shah,
Brandeis University, USA.

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