The cotton industry has been experiencing a decline in both export volumes and earnings. Photo / File
Cotton has always had something of a troubling past. In his treatise on the fluffy white fibre titled Empire of Cotton: A Global History, historian Sven Beckert meticulously lays out how it came to become the principal global commodity in the 19th Century. Its journey to the top, Beckert writes, was violently yoked to exploitation.
Such was the scope of the cotton industry that strands of slave culture, expropriation, colonialism, capitalism, and globalisation can be glimpsed in actions that installed it as an empire. In Uganda, natives particularly bore its brunt by not only working punishing hours on the spinning wheel, but also in other processes of yarn production (willowing and carding).
While cotton’s labour-intensive manufacturing stages both in the field and factories were dominated by natives, colonisers and their Asian functionaries oversaw the other lucrative processes of the textile production chain.
By 1910, Beckert writes, “Indian merchants [were] selling Ugandan cotton to Japan.” Such exploitation birthed many protests chiefly led by Ignatius Musaazi, whose country or ssaza of Bulemeezi was Buganda’s largest supplier of cotton.
Statistics from the Government of Uganda (GoU) show that cotton accounted for just 6.9 percent of Uganda’s total exports in April 2024. Per the GoU dataset, the exports were valued at $7.471 billion.
The Uganda Macroeconomic Digest further shows that cotton export revenues dropped by 40 percent in March from February.
While this was due to a 46 percent drop in export volumes, the general consensus is the fluffy white fibre is not what it once was during the colonial period.
In terminal decline?
The April export figures underscore the fact that gold (75.7 percent), coffee (21.9 percent), oil re-exports (21.8 percent) continue to dominate the bill. Even simsim (20.2 percent) and tobacco (10.3 percent) fared considerably better than cotton during April of 2024.
The Cotton Development Organisation (CDO), whose functions were last month mainstreamed into the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (Maaif), has for three decades taken on the mantle of running the rule over cotton production in Uganda.
The general consensus is that over the years, flagging performances have been mustered on CDO’s watch. While the cotton industry can, at full employment level, churn one million bales, it managed to put together 598,634 bales across five financial years from 2018/2019 to 2022/2023.
Despite this, Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries remained enormously supportive during the Rationalisation of Government Agencies and Public Expenditure (Rapex) process. In an April report, the House committee recommended that the Cotton Development (Amendment) Bill be shelved.
“The Committee notes that in countries such as Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, which liberalised their cotton industry without setting up a regulator like CDO, the sub-sector collapsed,” the report reads in part.
“The Committee observes that regulating on farm and off farm cotton activities is a function that requires full time attention by a specialised agency that is internationally accredited. Such a role is not duplicated anywhere in the mandates of Maaif or any other government agency. Accreditation can only be done by a body corporate thus the need to maintain CDO,” it adds.
Officials of North Bukedi Cooperative Union check cotton at Kabole ginnery in Pallisa. PHOTO/MUDANGHA KOLYANGHA
New lease of life?
Maaif’s top brass maintains that the cotton sub-sector’s five pillars of production, research, ginning, marketing, quality and standards, as well as value addition will get a new lease of life in its care.
Grown in 72 districts, the fluffy white fibre is estimated to directly and indirectly employ 2.5 million people in the country. Communities in cotton-growing hubs like Bukedi Sub-region will be hoping they do not end up inheriting a bad hand. Moreover after several years of scraping by, barely.
“Cotton has always been part of our heritage,” Mr Farouk Gundi, the chairman of North Bukedi Cooperative Union (NBCU), told Saturday Monitor, adding: “It’s time to take it back. This is not just about growing a crop; it’s about renewing the economy, creating jobs and providing sustainable incomes for families. We have a duty to revive it.”
If the time CDO spent monitoring the production, processing and marketing of cotton in Uganda seemed uneventful, it is because it was. Many cotton farmers in Bukedi Sub-region found the semi-autonomous body founded in 1994 by an Act of Parliament unimaginative and lacking in fresh ideas.
“Most of the farmers had abandoned cotton growing for various reasons, but the union will also emphasise the importance of group farming, encouraging smallholder farmers to join cooperatives,” Mr Gundi said in an interview.
“By pooling resources, farmers can afford bulk fertilisers and pesticides, all of which will improve their yields.”
There has always been a feeling of not just déjà vu but also arrested development about Uganda’s cotton sub-sector.
The 20th Century pain points that drew Musaazi’s ire and resulted in a volatile exchange with the British colonial state still remain. Back during that late colonial period, Indian middlemen increasingly became the subject of snide remarks from the likes of Musaazi. To date, demands from cotton farmers persist in their urging of reforms that will put the middleman out of business.
“We want to ensure every farmer can see the value of their cotton without it being exploited by middlemen” Mr Gundi admitted, adding: “By establishing local ginneries, we can add value to the cotton here. This will eventually lead to the creation of jobs and keeping profits in the community.”
The road ahead
Mr Arthur Wako Mboizi, the Budaka County lawmaker, disclosed that since the mid-2000s, “many farmers were left struggling with dwindling profits, poor harvests, and a lack of investment in the industry.”
Now, armed with the gospel of “regenerative agriculture”, NBCU is confident a new page can be turned. Modern farming techniques that focus on enhancing and increasing crop yields are being held up as a panacea.
“The union will profile all farmers and thereafter sign contracts with them so that they can be supported with inputs, pesticides and quality seeds. We shall be assured of quantity and quality,” Mr James Okoboi, NBCU’s secretary manager, revealed.
The union says it will with great granularity target cotton farmers. It hopes to successfully reach 7,500 farmers from 75 primary societies.
“There is a growing perception that farmers don’t want to grow cotton because of its low prices and other challenges associated with it. This is merely misleading” Mr Okoboi explained, adding “With the new strategic plan, farmers will be assured of a good minimum price for their cotton. We shall also encourage them to sell in bulk.”
Mr James Iranga said despite the huge investment incurred by farmers like himself, the cotton sub-sector has been thrown into further turmoil by the issue of poor seeds.
“We are proud of growing cotton, but the prevailing challenges push us out of the business. We get little money out of the cotton,” he said.
