This paper assesses three of these policy initiatives: input credit provision for smallholder producers of selected cash crops including cotton, the proposed creation of a Cotton Board, and the emergence in 2003 of District Council levies as a point of conflict between local governments and...

Produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development under the WACIP project funded by USAID (Programme de Renforcement du Secteur Coton en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre

1. Changes in spinning technology have increased the premium on high quality lint in the world market and increased the discount for lint contaminated with non-vegetative matter 2. The inherent characteristics of most African lint, plus the fact that it is hand-picked, should give it a...

1. Zambia has paid among the best nominal seed cotton prices to farmers in SSA since 1995. 2. By a more refined measure (share of FOT), during 1995-1999, Zambia paid prices comparable to those in Tanzania (a very competitive sector), and substantially higher than in Mozambique and WCA. However,...

1. Smallholder farmers in Africa require reliable access to purchased production inputs and credit to take advantage of export opportunities from production of cotton. 2. Unregulated and poorly coordinated markets for cotton, production inputs and credit have too often failed to deliver...

1. Farm yields are one key indicator of the productivity of a cotton sector, and an important determinant of returns to farmers (and thus of cotton’s ability to reduce poverty) 2. Zambia’s relatively good performance on input credit provision means that it has been able to raise yields since...

This paper grows out of earlier work on cotton by the Food Security Research Project. It is directed towards policy makers and private stakeholders in Zambia’s cotton sector, and has four main purposes: (a) To provide a detailed descriptive overview of the organization of the sector and of the...

Institute of Agricultural Research of Mozambique Directorate of Training, Documentation, and Technology Transfer

Cotton is one unquestioned success of Zambia’s turn towards a market economy. After liberalization in late 1994, production rose from 20,000 mt to over 100,000 mt in the 1998 harvest year. After collapsing to less than 50,000 mt in 2000, it has risen steadily, nearing 200,000 mt in 2005. Over...

Research results from SIMA-Department of Statistics and Department of Policy Analysis MADER-Directorate of Economics