World Cotton Day:Weaving a better future for cotton

The initiative of World Cotton Day was born in 2019, when four cotton producers in sub-Saharan Africa– Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali, known as the Cotton Four -proposed the World Trade Organization a World Cotton Day celebration on October 7(fao).

In August 2021, the General Assembly of the United Nations recognised the unique benefits of cotton by proclaiming 7 October of each year as World Cotton Day. The objective of this global celebration is to raise the visibility of the cotton sector and awareness of the critical role that it plays in economic development, international trade and poverty alleviation(fao)

Cotton is the most widespread profitable non-food crop in the world. Its production provides income for more than 250 million people worldwide and employs almost 7% of all labor in developing countries. Approximately half of all textiles are made of cotton(wwf).

In the 1980s and 1990s, Nigeria had, unarguably, one of Africa’s largest textile industry with over 180 textile mills functioning optimally, employing close to over 450,000 workers and contributing in excess of 25 per cent of the workforce in the manufacturing sector.

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