Pierre Spies in full flight

With the Rugby World Cup now into the knock-out stages everybody and his dog is coming up with a theory for what teams should be doing. This is especially true of the Springboks in the wake of news that Frans Steyn and Francois Hougaard are on their way back home. It’s a tough one. Nobody doubts Jean de Villiers is a world class centre and while he can certainly hold his own against the convicts I’m not that certain about him standing up to Nonu or Sonny-Bill.

Perhaps it’s time to pull a rabbit out of the hat and play Pierre Spies at inside centre, with Willem Alberts taking his place at the back of the scrum and Jean de Villiers shifting to the left wing in place of Habana – who has frequently been exposed on defence. That would certainly be a far stronger defensive line up and on attack, well, how you like to have Pierre Spies bearing down on you in full flight? I certainly wouldn’t. It’s certainly food for thought.

And then there’s Ruan Pienaar: I love to see him get a start ahead of Fourie du Preez – although I wouldn’t drop Fourie further than the bench. He’d be an incredible sup-sub.

The original news broke in Nature when preliminary results of an experiment dubbed CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets were unveiled. Conducted by scientists at CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, the experiment attempts to replicate atmospheric conditions by filling a custom-built chamber with ultrapure air and chemicals believed to seed clouds: water vapour, sulphur dioxide, ozone and ammonia. They then bombard the chamber with protons from the same accelerator that feeds the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle smasher. As the synthetic cosmic rays stream in, the group carefully samples the artificial atmosphere to see what effect the rays are having. You can read about it here.

To understand what it all means, however, one must refer to sources who are less reticent about interpretation of the results of the experiment. Over at the Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon is unequivocal: “New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans,” he writes.

Another interpretation takes the form of a video clip on the LaRouche Political Action Committee web site. Presented by Oyang Teng of the LaRouche Basement Research Team. Suggesting these experiments have proven the fallibility of current climate models, he says that, “…rather than revise current models, it’d probably be better to scrap them altogether and rebuild climate science on a whole new basis of actual experimental work.” You can watch the clip here.

Today there are indisputably more than a handful of genuine climate scientists – as opposed to the politicians and sycophants who make up the UN’s IPCC – who feel thoroughly vindicated for their opposition to the IPCC-sponsored climate orthodoxy. But being proper scientists, they probably won’t say “I told you so”, so I’ll do it on their behalf by quoting the title of the first Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report on the subject: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”.

Perhaps now we can consign to the annals of history, the completely idiotic idea that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is the cause of climate change. In years to come, we will probably be look back on that idea in a similar way to how we  now look back on the era of bleeding patients in western medical science: It’s as crude and as misguided.

The bottom line is that I applaud Google’s acquisition of Motorola’s mobile phone business because has potential to defuse the ridiculous patent litigation from Apple and extortionate license fees demanded by Microsoft. You see, Motorola has been around a lot longer than either of those two and has a portfolio of over 17 000 patents. That gives Google the option to threaten litigation of its own and, thereby, keep Android free-of-charge and unburdened by unreasonable licensing.

Which brings me to the point of this post: the current patent battle put me in mind of a piece I wrote about software patents for Brainstorm more than six years ago. Since most of the patents involved in the current furore are also software patents, that story also involved the litigious crowd in Redmond. I read through the story again this morning and found, to my astonishment, that very little has changed and much of what I wrote then is still relevant today. See for yourself but please bear in mind that when I say “last month” in the text, I mean February 2005:

Protection or exploitation? Opinions are divided on whether patents encourage innovation or over-protect intellectual property. Online dictionary and encyclo-paedia www.wikipedia.com defines a software patent as: “A patent intended to prevent others from using some programming technique”. But SA’s Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (CIPRO) offers such a general definition for the term “patent” that it allows software patents to be filed.

 Stifling innovation

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement (FSM) and outspoken critic of software patents, said in an article published on LinuxWorld last month: “Any software patent holder, including the pirates, can sue computer users as well as software developers. Threatening the users is a common technique for an unscrupulous patent holder to put the screws on a developer.” Bob Jolliffe, senior lecturer at Unisa’s School of Computing, says: “Software is already protected by copyright. It’s a bit like taking a book and protecting it by copyright, but also registering a patent to protect the plot, or the style, or the genre,” he says.

Adding to the debate, Alexis Apostolidis, patent attorney with DM Kisch, says: “Copyright provides protection in respect of the source code per se, but may not extend to cover the idea embodied in the source code. Accordingly, I believe that copyright does not protect the functionality that one would seek to protect by way of a patent.”

Nhlanhla Mabaso of the CSIR disagrees: “Patents were designed to reward innovation, not suppress it Software patents could result in the latter, and a monopoly on knowledge for dominant players.”

Since much of the argument against software patents is from members of the open source software (OSS) community and commercial software vendors usually offer counter-arguments, the dispute is often misrepresented as a fight between legitimate software developers and Stallman’s FSM. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Patent commons

Attention focused on IBM last year when it released 500 of its 40 000+ patents to what it called a “patent commons” for use by the OSS community. Joe Ruthven, business development manager: Linux and OSS at IBM SA, clarifies: “This is a pledge, not a donation. It is about IBM’s view on patents and refers to the fact that we are completely re-examining how we manage IP [intellectual property] with an eye to greater balance between proprietary and collaborative innovation. Many greeted the move enthusiastically.”

Stacey Quandt, an analyst with the Robert Frances Group (RFG), wrote recently about IBM’s pledge: “RFG believes this represents the largest bequest of software patents to the open source commons. If other software vendors follow IBM and pledge open access to the patent commons, this could result in the creation of a virtual patent pool.

“Since individual developers and companies will be able to copy, modify, and redistribute technology covered by 500 IBM patents without payment of fees or royalties, this could lead to new open source products and innovations.”

Stallman was more cautious in his LinuxWorld article: “This announcement does not cover all of IBM’s software patents. And there are other areas where IBM does not yet co-operate with the free software community … and they are still pursuing Treacherous Computing. Nonetheless, this is a real step.” PR stunt?

Following IBM’s move, Sun Microsystems made a similar announcement regarding 1 600 of its patents. Stallman again: “It said that Sun had given us ‘free access to Sun OpenSolaris related patents under the Common Development and Distri- bution License’ [CDDL]. But those words do not really make sense. The CDDL is a license for the copyright on software, not a policy for licensing patents. It applies to specific code and nothing else.

“We can be quite sure that not all large patent holders will do this. In fact, there is one company with lots of patents that surely won’t take such a step. That is Microsoft, which says it is our enemy. Microsoft would love to make useful free software effectively illegal, and has plenty of money to pay lawyers to use whatever avenues governments provide them.

“But the danger is not only from those that specifically consider us their enemies. It also comes from patent holders, who are the enemy of everyone,” he says.

Jolliffe believes others will follow IBM, but urges caution: “HP, for example, has a large commitment to OSS … all these companies, IBM included, are running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Many see a significant part of their future as being entwined with the development of open source. [But] at the same time they’re sitting on patent portfolios.”

Local legalese

Gerard Verhoef, Director of IP: Stellen-bosch University, has studied local patent law: “The Patent Act is very clear in this regard and section 25(2)(f) states that no computer program is patentable. However, section 25(3) leaves the door open for patenting in very limited cases.”

He says that the provision has not yet been tested in SA courts and local patent attorneys refer to foreign court decisions when giving advice on the subject. “In SA the problem is avoided because no formal patent search or investigation is required.”

Apostolidis confirms this: “Patent applications are not examined in South Africa as to whether the invention is, inter alia, novel and inventive. A patent is presumed to be valid unless proven otherwise.”

He notes further that enforceability must be judged case by case. Sometimes, especially in a commercially important patented invention, the SA patent is amended to at least partially mirror one of its corresponding patents that have been examined regarding novelty and inventiveness internationally. “In such a case the enforceability of the patent may be greater than a patent wherein the novelty and inventiveness of the invention has never been assessed,” he says.

The inference is that software is indeed being patented in SA. The website of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), an offshoot of the World Trade Organisation, confirms this. WIPO reports that 90 655 patent applications were submitted in SA in 2002 alone. (More recent figures were not available.) It is not clear how many of these have been granted.

Interestingly, SA residents made only 184 of these applications.

Internationalisation

Why are foreigners seeking local patents? Apostolidis explains that an international patent does not exist. You need to obtain patent protection in every country in which you would like to exploit your invention.

But this might change. WIPO’s mandate is the globalisation and normalisation of patents and copyrights, which is a complicated issue. Jolliffe says a motion that was put to WIPO last year by Brazil was “very important, particularly from the perspective of developing countries”.

Co-sponsored by Venezuela, India and South Africa, the motion calls for a new development agenda at the WIPO. Jolliffe points out that in the late 19th century, it was seen to be in the national interest for US intellectual property law not to respect any copyright or any patent that did not originate in the US. So the developing world is arguing, says Jolliffe, that they need the same advantages that developed countries once enjoyed.

On the ground

Meanwhile, he has followed developments in Europe and notes that Poland has been holding up the process. “Patents are seen as a threat to small, emerging national economies and it’s really not surprising to see Poland putting its foot down. I’m more interested really in seeing what its impact is going to be here.”

Apostolidis explains: “Article 52 of the European Patent Convention also excludes computer programs and methods of doing business as such, and to a large extent, the wording of the South African Patent’s Act mirrors the wording of Article 52. A court would thus likely follow the EU law with regard to software patents and the like.”

“My understanding is that software patents are being and have been granted in this country … because of the interpretation around what’s meant by a computer program,” says Unisa’s Jolliffe. “That’s a worry for me because we’re having the ideological debate in one direction, but meanwhile it’s all happening anyway.”

Apostolidis confirms this, saying that an informal patent name search reveals that during 2003 and 2004, Microsoft Corp- oration has filed about 90 patent applications, some of which are software related.

Jolliffe urges vigilance: “As a country we are obliged to pressure our politicians to legislate in the national interest in exactly the same way the US did in the 19th century. We’re under a lot of pressure from organisations like WTO to normalise patent and copy- right legislation – and we have to resist.”

Patently absurd

One of the arguments against software patents is that some applications are ludicrous. The Register ran a story last month, which mentioned a number of questionable applications to patent basics like basic programming instructions, the “y-axis”, interactive test feedback, and “reading ahead” 20 records at a time in a database, when the user clicks the Previous or Next buttons.

The US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) website revealed that all the above patents have a connection to Microsoft. (This is not to say that Microsoft is the sole abuser of the US patent system.)

The response from Microsoft SA was: “Our focus is on making our IP more broadly available via licensing and working in a collaborative way. With our December 2003 IP Policy announcement, we have revised our approach to respond to industry feedback and requests that we make our IP portfolio more broadly available to others.

“Since then, Microsoft has entered into a number of cross-licensing agreements. In addition to SAP and Siemens, Microsoft also maintains agreements with companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Unisys, to name a few.”

Earlier this year the USPTO granted Microsoft as patent for a: “consumer-based system and method for managing and paying electronic billing statements”. The application was filed back in December 1999.

It is not clear whether Microsoft has applied for this patent locally.

On the subject of the US patent, Apostolidis adds: “The most important parts of the specification are the claims, as these determine the scope of one’s protection. Should a person carry out an infringing act, for example by using or selling a cashflow analyser user interface as claimed, one would infringe the patent.

“One can be proactive and apply for the revocation of the patent, if there is an SA one, on the basis, inter alia, that the invention is not patentable in terms of the Act, is not novel and/or not inventive. Alternatively, one could wait to be sued for infringement and either raise the invalidity of the patent as a defence, or counterclaim for revocation of the patent,” notes Apostolidis.

This morning I’ve watched a long-time friend @samanthaperry discussing important issues with someone else I follow on Twitter: @JoziGoddess. Sam started it by posting this:

Zama responded with this:

And we were off. It went back and forward for about 20 minutes, covering BEE, wealth redistribution as well as corruption in both the public and private sectors. I could see that both were getting frustrated because of the seeming inability of the other to see their point of view and I realised then that the problem wasn’t only that 140 characters is very limiting for a debate but that they were talking past each other. This seemed to be creating tension and I, unwisely, tried a couple of times to broaden the topic under discussion. I was ignored. But that’s fine, I shouldn’t have butted in in the first place.

Please note that I only use this exchange as an illustration. I could have used any of the exchanges I’ve witnessed or been part of on Twitter in the past six months. I have immense respect for both these ladies: Samantha from knowing and working with her for a long time; and Zama from following her on Twitter and reading her Tweets. These are intelligent ladies but they couldn’t find common ground in that discussion.

Watching that, and the unhappy way it ended, got me thinking that as South Africans we talk to each other but we don’t really listen. We all have prejudices that are very difficult to see past and are rooted in our respective backgrounds. That’s a given but what’s really sad is that just about every such debate eventually becomes about race. It happened to me yesterday. I criticised Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, our former health minister and her successor, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, calling them both idiots. The response I got surprised and irritated me:

In the cold light of day, however, I can see where that comes from. It’ a deeply held prejudice among many black people that criticism of any black person by a white is automatically racist. But it goes both ways, as Zama showed in a tweet she posted after her discussion with Samantha:

And she’s dead right. But all of this makes me sad because it is evident that we all have our views about what is and isn’t wrong with South Africa but we can’t see to find common ground from which to venture into these areas of contention and eradicate those prejudices. Again, Zama said it best:

Come people. Apartheid wounded us all in different ways and turned us into a divided society. Let’s live the dream; Let’s talk to each other but also listen to each other; Let’s look for commonality rather than differences.

However, the fact remains that this government hasn’t done enough for the victims of apartheid. On that I agree with Malema but we differ markedly on the solution – but then my motivation isn’t self-enrichment. I’m not certain the same can be said for him. But I digress. The real point of this post is to highlight what I think is a brilliant solution to the reparations problem facing this government. I should note at this juncture that this post is an expansion of my editor’s note in the next issue of African Leader magazine, which role is one of my day jobs.

The idea, I have to admit, is not my own. Indeed, a good friend, @IvoVegter if you must know, alerted me the other day to an interview Denis Beckett did recently on his weekly Radio Today show, Quiet Revolution. The interview was with Leon Louw, director of the Free Market Foundation and you can download it here. Be warned though, it’s a wide-ranging discussion lasting for more than an hour. And while its all well worth a listen (especially the blast from the past when Beckett plays Jeremy Taylor’s Ag Please Daddy), the specific comments I’m referring to come about 42-and-a-half minutes into that hour.

Given that Louw is a lawyer by training, he tends to be quite verbose so I’ve edited what he said and put it in quotes to distinguish it from my own comment: “The present regime inherited the loot of the apartheid regime. People think that parastatals and SOEs were created by the apartheid regime. The answer is no, they were all private businesses that the apartheid regime nationalised and it was because the apartheid regime was nationalising that the ANC, in the freedom charter, was not for nationalisation and never was, as has been pointed out by the author of the relevant clauses, Ben Turok.”

What Louw proposes is that government take all that “loot”, and divide it up among black South Africans. It’s a two-pronged plan. Firstly, on the land issue, he points out that millions of poor South Africans currently inhabit state-owned land. His contends that government should give that land to them on freehold title (including the land on which RDP houses are built).

He reckons that will add a trillion rand (R1,000,000,000,000) to the economy overnight because it will give those disadvantaged South Africans something of value that they can sell or trade. On average, he says, it’ll put R100,000 into their pockets. Now, obviously, that’s debatable because a the value of a plot in Alex is not the same as the value of a similar-sized plot in TweeBuffelsMetEenSkootDoodGeskietFontein. So the idea needs work to ensure that equitable benefit accrues to victims of apartheid. At the same time, we need to make absolutely certain that the beneficiation process is not high-jacked and corrupted by the people meant to administer it. We’ve been down that road; Hell, we’re still on it.

Perhaps the second prong of Louw’s strategy can balance things out, which is effectively to privatise all the SOEs with shares being allocated to black South Africans. OK, he didn’t say “privatise”. He said: “We should give [SOEs to] black South Africans, in a giant give-away, directly for ownership by themselves, as Nelson Mandela himself propagated in the fifties…”

I used the word privatise because very few, if any, of the SOEs has consistently turned a profit in recent time. So my refinement of Louw’s idea is to invite private sector bids for 51% of these entities, with the balance handed out in dividend-earning shares to deserving South Africans with a net worth of less than some arbitrary figure of say, R20 000. That sounds so much more sensible than nationalisation of businesses that pay the tax that largely funds the government. So who is going to pick up the ideas, refine them further and run with them? Mr Zuma?

Photograph: Ivan Naude

The previous articles in this series postulated the creation of a sustainable and world-class textile industry in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors’ case made provision for every step in the process, from growing the cotton plant to producing the dyed and finished fabric – on the African continent. All that is left is the garments themselves. In the final instalment, Andrew McLachlan and Brian Bakker consider the development of an African apparel industry.

What of an African apparel industry?

Unfortunately, the idea of developing an African apparel industry is nothing new. Africa has had a long and undistinguished history as far as the making of final garments is concerned, virtually all of them spectacularly unsuccessful. Certainly, there are isolated pockets of the apparel production industry that have survived and even thrived. However, there is nothing approaching the scale of what would be needed to produce enough garments for local markets – let alone produce enough quality apparel to satisfy the demand from international markets.

Among those countries in which garment making has been tried, Lesotho and Swaziland illustrate how business success can be achieved at the expense of basic human labour rights. Both countries welcomed Taiwanese investors and made concessions such as long-term tax breaks in the pursuit of employment opportunities for the local communities. All to no avail: Promises were not kept and today the garment manufacturing industry in those countries is a shadow of what it could have been.

Dodgy foreign investments

There have also been disastrous foreign direct investments welcomed into several African countries in the textile industry, and more specifically the labour-intensive apparel industry. Examples include the Ramatex Textile and Garment fiasco in Namibia and the multi-million dollar promises elicited from the Ugandan government to establish a Tri-Star Apparel of Sri Lanka factory in Bugolobi, Uganda, in 2007.

Neither of these ventures delivered revenue for the countries involved. In the latter case, Tri-Star was guaranteed a loan of US$5 million from the Ugandan Development Bank, given tax waivers on equipment imports and given free premises to undertake operations. The company was also subsidised to train local workers in garment-making.

Tallying the cost after Tri-Star shut down operations when the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Multi-Fibre Arrangement terminated in 2005, is revealing: Tri-Star did not use one kilogram of Ugandan cotton in its operations; it imported all materials used in the factory from south-east Asia and took full advantage of the AGOA agreement to maximise profitability. The net result for Uganda was that its exports to the United States of America for the year 2005 totalled merely US$4.5 million, while those of neighbouring Kenya amounted to a whopping US$278 million, according to an AGOA 2006 Assessment Report.

Similarly, the Ramatex fiasco did not help to develop a sustainable garment-making industry in Namibia. However, it is worthwhile noting that the losers as a result of these deals were not the national governments; the thousands of local workers who were exploited and whose rights were abused by these companies are the ones who suffered the most.

Photograph: Ivan Naude

Missed opportunities

At this juncture it is worth noting that Africa has not been able to maximise the favourable export opportunities that were afforded by the terms of AGOA, or even the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) with the European Union.

Instead, countries in Africa have relied on their status as developing economies to attract foreign investment – typically from unscrupulous multi-nationals – in an attempt to find quick fixes for our ailing economies. That this strategy has not worked for the average African worker is now abundantly clear and it is time that we Africans found another way to make an impact on the global market for apparel.

It is notable that in the chart, depicting share of the global apparel market by country, Africa is not mentioned at all. That’s because the continent is lumped in the “rest of the world” figure. In actual fact, the picture is even bleaker than that: The size of the global apparel market in 2010 was estimated to reach US$1 782 billion; Africa’s share of that was less than 1%.

The bottom line is that Africa is seen as an insignificant player in the global apparel market and the outlook suggests that this view is not likely to change any time soon unless we Africans do something to change the perception.

Many considerations

There are a great many factors to be taken into account when considering an investment in the apparel industry. Among the key issues are: Labour productivity (usually very high in China); quality and cost of available textile materials; energy prices; lead times (to key markets); services offered to apparel importers or brands (by host countries), import tariff rates in Europe or the USA (from host countries) and cost of freight.

On the plus side, Africa currently enjoys favourable import tariff rates to both Europe and the USA. And as illustrated in previous articles in this series, spinning, knitting, dyeing and finishing facilities could be established with relative ease. One area in which Africa has challenges, however, is the cost of labour.

What is notable is that in the table provided on Apparel Manufacturing Labor Costs in 2008, sub-Saharan African countries, with the exception of South Africa, do not feature on the list. The simple reason is that, in global terms, there is no garment industry to speak of in the region. In addition, none of the African countries that are listed can offer really competitive labour costs – competitive with the likes of Bangladesh, India and Vietnam, that is.

And if we take South Africa as a lesson, the rest of the continent should be careful to avoid the quagmire that country got itself into; one that led to thousands of job losses over the last few years. The simple reality is that while the demands of the workforce are reasonable given the high cost of living in the country, those demands have led to the virtual decimation of the mass-market apparel industry in South Africa. However, as will be shown, that was only partially as a result of increasing labour costs and mostly due to other factors.

Unlike spinning, knitting, dyeing or finishing, the garment assembly portion of the industry is highly labour intensive: To establish a working garment facility, the capital outlay required of an operation involving 1 000 employees would be in the region of US$7 million (this estimate is achieved by adjusting Tri- Star’s 2007 investment in Uganda for inflation).

Impact of wages

However, if the consequences of wage increases on production costs in the apparel market are analysed, one finds that labour, as a percentage of the final garment cost, is not very significant when other factors are concerned – which is not to say, however, that it is not a factor when choosing the location for an apparel factory.

Far from it. Investors in the apparel industry are constantly looking for opportunities where labour costs are very low. And Africa can influence this model by opening up borders within the continent. If, for example, African countries were to join the common customs union of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Southern Africa Customs Union, and extend it over the entire continent, it would remove roughly 25% of the cost of moving a garment across a border.

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Another factor is so-called profiteering on the part of retailers: Over half the cost of a finished garment is taken by the retailer channel. It may be useful for African governments to offer the retail channel tax breaks based on the percentage that 100% African-made goods make up of their total sales, and by the same token, and given the comparatively short lead times that would be possible if garments were made in Africa, to encourage retailers to invest in growing an African apparel market.

Consequences of wage increases on apparel production costs: Men’s knit shirt 

Manufactured in the Philippines

Market dynamics

In order to establish a sustainable African apparel industry, however, the nature of the market has to be understood. As is indicated in the accompanying chart, 50% of all apparel is currently produced in China, and the figure is expected to grow to 70% going forward. This has profound implications for the jobs in other markets, particularly in Central and southern America, as well as the few jobs still left in Africa.

Referring back to the table of labour costs, it is clear that in order to compete in the market, the rate of labour should not exceed US$1.08 per hour and the rate of productivity at the very least would have to be a match for the Chinese. However, some leeway may be found in the fact that Africa could have a lead-time advantage over China and other points east – certainly for its own markets and potentially for those in Europe as well. But again, customs duties and tariffs internal to the continent would have to be eliminated.

Furthermore, instead of exporting all its ginned cotton to Asia for spinning and value-add, the spinning, dyeing and finishing could be undertaken in Africa, with garment-makers sited close to those plants. This could reduce lead-times from the current 180 days to 60 days or less. The saving in finance costs alone would be significant and would no doubt pique the interests of African apparel buyers.

It should also be borne in mind that large African-based apparel retailers presently have little choice but to source the bulk of their overall offering from outside of Africa. South Africa’s Edgars Consolidated StoresLimited (Edcon) illustrates this continent-wide trend quite well: According to a case study on the apparel procurement site, Eqos, Edcon sources 40% of its goods internationally from 25 countries, shipping via 55 ports of lading.

Internal barriers

Unfortunately, many of the impediments to creating a viable textiles industry on the continent, as postulated in this and previous articles in the series, are internal barriers. Certainly, there are political considerations associated with removal of trade barriers between African neighbours but perhaps the African Union could use the facilitation of such negotiations as an opportunity to earn its keep, as a first step.

Secondly, there is the issue of internal African infrastructure – or rather, the lack thereof. One thing is certain: for any such industry to be successful, governments will have to come to the party by helping to develop the necessary road and rail infrastructure between different elements of the industry – whether they are involved in the growing, spinning or knitting or cotton, the dyeing or finishing of fabric, or the assembly of garments.

One of the challenges increasingly facing Africa is that of unemployment. As was seen, the most labour-intensive part of textiles production is the final assembly of the final articles, be they apparel, linen or towelling products. The skills to do these jobs should also be relatively easy to develop. All that would be required is a stable source of finished fabric, which would mean developing each element of the production chain to its fullest potential for the good of the continent rather than for individual countries.

African countries must begin to work in concert and for the good of the continent first – and themselves second. In that way, we, as Africans, will be able to transform the current global perception of Africa.

Article republished courtesy African Trader magazine

There is a wonderful product started by a friend of mine many years ago called The Media List. It began as a book and then a series of books and is now available via the internet too. What it is is a complete listing of all the newspapers, magazines, radio shows, television shows and online media resources in the country. It is used mostly in the public relations industry because it provides the names, telephone numbers and email addresses of section editors and key journalists who work at each publication – along with lots of other useful info.

The media

But I digress, the reason I mention The Media List is because it allows me to quantify “the media”. For example, I have a three Media List books from about five years ago that list: daily & Sunday newspapers (including news services); consumer magazines; and trade & technical magazines. I haven’t counted the number of publications in them - the books I have are in an electronic document format – but I can tell you that they are 43, 65 and 64 pages long, respectively. Think about that for a second; there is probably about four publications per page on average, which by extrapolation means 172, 260 and 256 publications. That’s well over 600 newspapers and magazines.

Now, I have lately been hearing (and seeing on Twitter as well as in newspapers, in magazines and online) lots of criticism of “the media”. Sometimes that’s qualified by the word “mainstream”. Let’s look at that: mainstream covers all daily & Sunday newspapers as well as those magazines targeting a wide consumer audience. So, according to my five-year old numbers, that means more than 400 publications.

Typically, this is the group of publication people should be referring to when they say “the media”. In reality, however, they may have seen one negative article in one newspaper or magazine and yet “the media” is publishing negative reports, feeding the myth that “the media” is one amorphous mass.

This is nothing short of unadulterated cod’s wallop. Each of the 400+ mainstream publications has at the very least one editor and several journalists and the bigger ones have an editorial staff that comprises as many as 20, 30 or even 50 journalists and section editors. These are all fiercely independent and mostly principled people who represent a wide range of views, backgrounds and ideas.

One publication

I’ve also noticed that many of the comments about “the media” reflect a total ignorance about how the news gathering and production processes work. So, I’m going to explain it by using a hypothetical monthly magazine as an example.

The thing to understand about most magazines in the retail space is that they are funded by advertising. Any cover price is usually just an attempt by the publisher to recoup some of the printing and distribution costs. So, that being the case, the size of our hypothetical magazine is governed by the number of pages the advertising sales team has sold for it. Usually, we make an estimate based on the size of the previous issue and a conversation with the sales manager. In the case of our hypothetical magazine, we’re going to settle on an initial estimate of 64 pages.

Now magazines in this country usually run on a ratio of 60:40, editorial:advertising. In real terms, this means that our 64-page magazine will have about 38 editorial pages. I say “about” because I have yet to come across a publication that will refuse a last-minute advert unless the magazine has already gone to print. But usually, the 60:40 is a good approximation. This calculation is sometimes skewed a little by the covers: the front cover is typically classified as editorial while the inside front, inside back and outside back covers are all considered advertising space.

Next, we have to decide what editorial stories we are going to cover in the next issue. Most magazines have a broad plan based on the readership profile that guides the editor and journalists. This often only needs to be updated from issue to issue to cover current news events. Story ideas are then debated, articles commissioned and everybody gets to work. In a magazine, most articles take about two weeks to research and write. They are then delivered to the editor for vetting and submission to the production process.

Production process

Once the editor has vetted the articles for quality and to ensure that they cover their subjects in a manner consistent with the mission of the magazine, he will push them into sub-editing. A sub-editor, for those who don’t know, is a language specialist. He or she, is tasked with making sure that all articles are grammatically correct and conform to the magazine’s style guide for written language. This is often also where headlines created and pullquotes (sentences used to break up the text) identified.

Meanwhile, the art editor has been scouring image libraries for appropriate artwork to illustrate each article in the finished magazine. Once the articles are back from subbing, which usually takes a week for the whole magazine, they are bundled with the requisite artwork and sent to the layout artist(s) to be placed on editorial pages. Again, this process often takes about two weeks for a whole magazine.

Next is proofing. In the old days, editors would proof pages on physical printouts but these days it’s more common to use lowres PDFs. At this stage captions are inserted and visual problems are ironed out. Finally, about a week later, the magazine goes off to print, which again can take up to two weeks. If you have been paying attention, that has been some eight weeks of production for a monthly magazine. By necessity, one issue always overlaps the next one.

Now, change the measure from pages to column centimetres and cram that whole process into seven days for a weekly paper or 24 hours for a daily. If, at this point, you’re wondering why the process is so lengthy and involved, I’d like to remind you of a little comment attributed to that famous writer and journalist, Ernest Hemingway: ”The first draft of everything is shit.”

Not surprisingly, he was right, which is why most journalists write and rewrite several times over until they are happy with the article. Then it goes through the process outlined above so as to catch the typos, spelling and grammatical errors and to make it stylistically consistent with the rest of the magazine.

Criticism

There is a lot of criticism these days, some of it warranted and some not. During a discussion the other day with some people I follow on Twitter, many of them surfaced. In no particular order, I deal with them here.

The discussion I referred to earlier all began when @JoziGoddess tweeted: “SA media is in the business of repeating sound bites; not reporting news.” What offended me most about this comment was the generalisation. What media? Radio? Television? Magazines? Web sites? Newspapers? And which ones?

If one looks at television and radio, there’s the ultimate sound bite mediums. There time is literally money so news is short, sharp and to the point. Occasionally, there’ll be a magazine show or discussion forum in which a topic is dissected but these invariably run out of time. Similarly in print: you only have as much editorial space as advertisers fund.

But when I raised this, @Mabine_Seabe told me that he didn’t want to hear about space. “Journalists and Editors, if well qualified should be able to report on both good and bad,” he added. Well, sorry for you Mabine but space is an issue whether you like it or not. There is only so much and there is a truism cited frequently in the publishing that “good news doesn’t sell newspapers”. And in the newspaper (or magazine) business, circulation is everything. The higher the circulation, the more advertisers will pay to advertise. Consequently, the balance will always be skewed towards “bad” or negative news. That’s a simple economic reality.

@Mabine_Seabe also noted that “Newspapers are selling news, not opinions. If journos want to write opinion pieces, they should look into a career change.”

In principle, he’s wrong; but in practice, sadly, he may have a point. Newspapers have always covered news and provided analysis of that news (by respected journalists) as well as opinion in the form of columns. In most respected publications this is all clearly marked. However, in other less respected publications, the line has begun to blur.

Still, I don’t believe that this is necessarily a deliberate ploy. Far from it. I believe that it is the inevitable result of hard financial times during which clueless administrators replace experienced senior journalists and editors with younger, inexperienced and less expensive, journalists and editors. The inevitable result is a decline in editorial standards. Having said that, South Africa still has many well-respected publications who continue to deserve that respect – whether or not what they publish pleases the government and other critics. Names that spring immediately to mind are: Business Day, City Press, Mail & Guardian, The Daily Maverick, to name but four.

I think it was @TOMolefe brought up the subject of how Julius Malema and Jimmy Manyi seem to dominate the headlines these days. Whoever it was intimated that “the media” has a love affair with these two gentlemen. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When I was being taught to write, my lecturer said something that has stayed with me for the past almost twenty years: “News isn’t news unless it hurts somebody.” Since both gentlemen have a habit of speaking out on contentious issues that have potential to hurt somebody, this is why Mr Malema and Mr Manyi are constantly in the headlines.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that there is no single entity called the media. It is an industry made up of hundreds – maybe thousands of publications from newspapers and magazines to web sites and blogs to radio shows and television programmes.

So, the next time somebody criticises “the media”, ask him (or her) to be more specific: which newspaper or magazine or web sites or blogs or radio station or television programme, and which editor or journalist or presenter he (or she) is talking about? And what, specifically, did they write or say?

If they can’t answer intelligently then the chances are they know less than you do about how “the media” works.

Can Africa spin its own cotton?

The reason why a textile knitting, dyeing and finishing plant serving Africa first, and the rest of the world second, could not currently succeed is because the vast majority of cotton in Africa today is grown under contract for overseas markets. What it means is that Africa would have to dramatically expand its cotton production and avail itself of ginning and spinning facilities in order to produce enough spun cotton to supply such a hypothetical textile finishing plant. That’s a big task, given that Africa’s contribution to the cultivation of cotton has decreased considerably over the last five years.

However, expanding the cotton-growing sector could help Africa to deal with its single biggest challenge today: Massive unemployment. This is because agriculture is a labour-intensive pursuit and if the structures can be put in place to support millions of small cotton farmers, rather than large industrial operations, African governments could reduce unemployment and encourage entrepreneurial development at the same time.

In addition, there are potentially a number of spin-offs from the cotton growing and processing industry that can further impact on African economies. For instance, the primary waste product of the cotton ginning process is seeds. Depending on quality, a portion of this waste can be recycled for re-planting, another portion can be used to create cotton-seed oil, with the rest assembled into cakes for feeding livestock. All these ancillary pursuits offer opportunities for creating employment and contributing to the economy.

Declining prices

The main factor cited for the recent decline in the production of cotton in Africa is the drop in global prices for cotton. Cotton production has nearly halved over the last five years, according to Bachir Diop, President of the African Cotton Association (ACA). Speaking during the ACA’s annual congress in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Diop also targeted soaring costs of agricultural inputs as a cause for African farmers abandoning cotton production and called for a “Marshall Plan” to save the cotton farming industry in Africa. The organisation estimates that the industry supports in the region of 25 million Africans for some or much of their income.

Another part of the problem is that African cotton-producing countries have, for the most part, not concerned themselves with the cotton fibre value chain or looked beyond their place in it with a view to business growth. It’s high time that this attitude changed.

First, however, it is instructive to consider the components of the value chain: Cultivation and ginning, which is the process of separating cotton fibre from the seeds, stalks and other impurities, typically have taken place on African soil. From there, the ginned cotton fibre has been compressed into standard 218 kg bales of cotton lint and exported, primarily to the Far East. The cotton is then spun into yarn, which is knitted or woven into fabric for dyeing and finishing. The finished textiles are shipped to garment finishing houses all around the globe but, again, mainly in the Far East.

Foreign investment

Already, Asian companies are investing in Africa to increase production of cotton, specifically. For example, Olam Mozambique – a subsidiary of Singapore-based Olam International – announced in August 2010 that an investment of US$6 million would be made in a new state-of-the-art cotton ginning factory and a further US$4 million would be invested in agricultural inputs. The total project is expected to eventually support up to 75 000 peasant farmers in the area.

Similarly, across in Angola, a cotton processing factory with the capacity to process 200 tons of cotton per day was inaugurated in Kwanza Sul province in November 2010. This project is the result of a partnership between Spain’s Africa Sementes and Angola’s Mundo Verde and will not only establish cotton processing capability in the area but will also support the revitalisation of the cotton agriculture sector over an area of 5 000 hectares.

Furthermore, in May 2010 The Financial Express of Bangladesh reported that as a result of a ban on the export of raw cotton from India to Bangladesh, the government intended to source cotton from African countries in future. Commerce Minister Faruk Khan suggested that stumbling blocks, such as excessive lead times from Africa, could be overcome with the assistance of the Bangladeshi government. He added that establishing Africa as the key source for Bangladeshi cotton spinning companies would create numerous investment opportunities on the African continent.

There is, as ever, a problem with this scenario. The current modus operandi of Asian textile plants is to leave the cotton bales in bonded warehouses until such time as their spinning factories require them. This maximises Asian cash flow at the cost of Africans, who don’t get paid for their cotton until it leaves the bonded warehouse – a process over which they have absolutely no control.

Furthermore, when dealing with African cotton suppliers, Asian companies typically work on a four-month lead time from order to availability in the bonded warehouse. That is partly due to the length of time ships take to travel from Africa to Asia, which is usually six to eight weeks, but the other two months are usually the result of inadequate infrastructure and complex trade relationships within Africa itself. This is something that African governments could address.

Lessons from the past

One way to avoid many of these challenges is to create a home-grown value chain – from cultivation to finished garments. However, history teaches that establishment of such a value-added textile industry on the African continent would not be a trivial exercise. There have been attempts in the past, some involving millions of United States dollars invested by governments in

Africa. Often the goal was to pander to and meet the requirements of foreign companies but, in almost every case, Africans found their generosity and willingness to please unrewarded and they

obtained no local return on investment.

A case in point was establishment of the Malaysian-owned Ramatex Textile and Garment factory on the outskirts of Windhoek in Namibia. The complex comprised four garment factories, two knitting factories, two spinning mills and two dyeing factories – in short short, a fully-integrated textile value chain using African-ginned cotton and turning out African-produced garments. According to various sources, the employment opportunities were to have huge implications for the Namibian economy: It was expected that 10 000 to 15 000 jobs would be created once the complex was fully up and running; initially, around 3 000 people were employed.

The Namibian government established a team of stakeholders to manage the negotiations to ensure that Namibia won the right to host the Ramatex complex. It successfully beat several other African countries and invested some 60 million Namibian dollars to prepare the site for the Malaysians while also establishing an Export Processing Zone for the factory. Government also provided services such as power and water at reduced rates to further ensure competitiveness.

However, having secured all the concessions from the Namibian government, Ramatex reneged on its side of the deal from the beginning. It abused workers’ rights and imported cheap labour from Asia. In addition, Ramatex paid no taxes, but benefited from the free duty rates that Namibia enjoyed with regard to the export of garments to the United States of America, under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and thereby maximised its profits. Upon termination of the Multi-

Fibre Arrangement (MFA) on global textiles in 2005, Ramatex became even less co-operative with Namibian authorities, until the factory was closed in March 2008.

Hard numbers

It is clear that Africa needs to move up the value chain if its people are to benefit from any investment – domestic or foreign. A look at cotton production and export statistics may be instructive in this regard. Major cotton producers in Africa export roughly 90% of all cotton grown on the continent, with Nigeria the only listed country that retains 50% of its harvest for local markets.

Overall, Africa produced 5.5 million bales of cotton in 2005 and this decreased to 3.55 million bales in 2009. In addition, 92% of production in 2005 was exported while only 89% was shipped out two years ago. The only notable local importer of cotton fibre in sub-Saharan Africa is South Africa, which acquired 155 000 bales (less than 5% of Africa’s output) in 2009. Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia are among countries on the rest of the continent that have established textile industries.

However, as is revealed in United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research, there is plenty of unused arable land in Africa on which cash crops – like cotton – could be grown.

Indeed, Hugo Ahlenius reports on the UNEP website that there are some 300 million hectares of unused arable land on the continent. This could mean a potential increase in arable land used in Africa of anything from 150% to 700% per region, according the report, Current and potential arable land use in Africa.

To put this into perspective, consider that the size of the whole continent is 30 million sq km. Since there are 100 hectares in one square kilometre, the estimated 300 million hectares represents a mere 10% of the total area of the continent. So we have the land, we have the people. Is there enough demand for cotton and cotton products?

Ongoing demand

Global trends indicate that, if anything, demand for African cotton will continue to increase and it behoves leadership on the continent to ensure that this trade helps Africa and her people as much as it benefits foreign investors. As has been illustrated, this ongoing demand is a double-edged sword because it is likely to perpetuate the cycle of exporting raw cotton rather than processing it for local markets. This results in Africa having to import spun yarn, knitted fabric, finished fabric and made-up garments at huge premiums.

The only way that Africa can break that cycle is by creating a home-grown industry to service Africa, thereby reducing its reliance on imports and perhaps eventually even turning the continent into a net exporter of fabric and garments. The first step is the hypothesised textile knitting, dyeing and finishing plant. The second step is to establish a number of cotton spinning mills.

Spinning for Africa

Business analyst, Andrew McLachlan, crunched the numbers to establish the viability of an African spinning plant in sub-Saharan Africa. He calculated that in order to establish a factory able to supply the specified textile plant, rated to produce 100 tons of dyed and finished fabric per week, it would be necessary to install the required elements into the factory that would make it capable of producing the volumes reflected in Table 1. (Note that the counts of cotton yarn have been selected as a representative sample; in an actual situation, the counts spun by the spinning facility would be determined by the requirements of the knitting dyeing and finishing plants.)

For a spinning facility capable of producing the daily output specified in Table 1, the investment in specialist spinning machinery alone might be in excess of US$10 million (see Table 2). In addition, other more general machinery would be required (see Table 3). The anticipated running costs of such a plant are considerable, as detailed in Table 4, but according to these calculations, it should be possible to achieve a full return on investment in less than five years.

From the calculations it is clear that the suggested venture would indeed be worthwhile in sub-Saharan Africa. Certainly, local clothing retailers would welcome the massive reduction in lead time from garment order to delivery. Currently, this is in excess of 150 days and if it were all done locally, it should be possible to get this to below 45 days – with a commensurate positive impact on cash flow.

There is therefore no reason why African business cannot begin the creation of a fully-integrated, local textile industry. Indeed, it is time Africa stopped

being a supplier of raw materials and importer of finished goods, and moved up the textiles value chain – in many other industries, too. Sakhile Ngcobo, Head of External and Corporate Affairs at De Beers Consolidated Mines, told the annual conference of South Africa’s Black Management Forum last year, “Africa has all that it needs to stand on its own feet.” Ke nako (it is time) it did so.

Article republished courtesy African Trader magazine

Go to part three

Be warned, it’s quite long but I believe that it presents the business case  for a new, internally focused (at least initially) textiles industry in Africa. This one deals with the part of the production chain that produces finished and dyed fabric from spun cotton. I’ll post the others articles in the series in the coming weeks. As always, comments are welcome.

A case for African textiles

A current perception is that Africa simply cannot compete on price with Asia when it comes to manufacturing textiles. But perception doesn’t necessarily equal reality, Brian Bakker discovered.

The Asian economic boom, just like growth in Europe during the industrial revolution, began with textiles. Roll the clock back a hundred years or so and there is a familiar ring to the reasons that were cited for why Asia couldn’t compete with Europe. If Asia could use textiles as the foundation for massive growth in other related and unrelated industries, why can’t Africa do the same? Indeed, much of the raw material that fuels Asian and European industries comes from Africa, is processed, then returns in the form of manufactured products.

By contrast, if Africa were to create industries closer to the source of the raw material, that could reduce both the costs and the lead times and make the resulting products competitive in Africa, if not on the global stage. It’s compelling logic.

African textiles But first, some background. At present, Africa accounts for 12% of cotton production in the world, 90% of which is exported and made into knitted, dyed and finished fabric. That fabric is then brought back to Africa – sometimes as finished fabric but more often in the form of finished garments – at a hugely increased price.

The other side of the coin is that Africa also has become the dumping ground for textiles that do not meet other markets’ quality standards. All of this bolsters the impression that Africa cannot compete with Asian countries on price, something that is exacerbated by the effect dumping has had on the local textile industries.

Reports have been cited showing that In South Africa, for example, the import of Chinese textiles grew from 40% to 80% of the total textile imports in 2004 alone. The full effect has been realised this year with hundreds of jobs in clothing factories on the line over pressure to pay the minimum weekly wage of R324 to employees. Employment data from the Nigerian textile industry makes for equally depressing reading: The Nigeria Textile Manufacturing Association (NTMA) has reported that its figures of employees in the textile sector showed a decrease in number from 250 000 in 1996 to a mere 30 000 in 2006. And in Ghana, there is now only one fully operational textile factory – the others have had to be closed down.

Mauritius is probably the best-known example of textile manufacture in Africa. Indeed, the industry helped to transform the island economy from being mono-crop based in the 1980s to a middle-income, industrialised one today. This was achieved by means of establishing duty-free export processing zones. The result of this policy was massive foreign direct investment by China and India in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, an unintended consequence has been that the textile industry of the island nation is forced to import labour from China and India because young Mauritians consider the job of operating textile machinery menial. This pushed up the costs associated with finding and retaining skilled labour, negatively affecting the industry’s ability to compete. To add insult to injury, Mauritius had been one of the beneficiaries of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA, also known as the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing or ATC) that governed the world trade in textiles and garments from 1974 to 2004, imposing quotas on the amount developing countries could export to developed countries. That expired at the beginning of January 2005 and investment in the textile industry started to dry up as companies – even of the home-grown variety – relocated facilities to Madagascar in an attempt to lower the costs of labour. The result has been a complete re-sizing of the Mauritian textile industry.

Andrew McLachlan happens to have designed and built textile plants in the Far East. He also understands business, having completed an MBA at Manchester Business School. Lessons McLachlan asserts that Africa didn’t do it right the first time, and now has a unique opportunity to try again. And this time Africans are in a position to draw lessons – in no particular order – from textile industry development all over the planet.

1. The first lesson is humility. At present, the global textile and garment market is worth in the region of US$400 billion per annum; the African share of that is a paltry US$200 million – or 0.05%. But therein lies the opportunity: Demand for textiles continues to increase and the global population approaches seven billion people.

2. The second lesson is trade agreements. However, as was seen with Mauritius, these are usually not open-ended and should be viewed merely as a device for use in gaining a foothold. Currently, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has favourable trade agreements, most notably the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), with the United States of America and Europe. It would be remiss of any business not to take advantage of these wherever and whenever possible.

3. Lesson three concerns expertise and financing. In Africa today, there is a possibly unhealthy reliance on Asian investment and skills – on the twin assumptions that the continent is short of capital and Africans lack those skills. The reality is that over many years, people have been leaving their countries of origin to make their way in the wider world. Luring those Africans – and perhaps the capital to which they have access – back home should be high on the agenda of every African country. Failing that, or in the event that the specific skills required are in particularly short supply, expatriate contracts with reasonable and measurable skills transfer clauses have worked elsewhere in the world.

4. Lesson four is probably important enough to be the first lesson: Target market. Again, the SADC region is presently the only African trading bloc capable of sustaining – on local demand alone – a reasonably-sized, high technology-focused textile plant to focus on high value weft knitting, dyeing and finishing of fabrics along with an associated garment industry. The aforementioned SADC trade agreements should provide further inducement.

5. Lesson five involves the site chosen for beginning the new African textile industry. That should be somewhere in SADC. Other locale-influencing considerations involve the raw material needed to process the textiles – not the cotton so much as the water, energy and salt. The finger is beginning to zero in on a region near the Limpopo (for reliable hydroelectric power and water) and not too far from the Botswana salt supply.

6. The sixth lesson deals with perception – or, more accurately, shatters the perception that this continent cannot compete with the textiles, fabrics, and clothing that are developed and produced in Asia. The primary assertion in this regard is that labour costs are too high in Africa, but that’s wrong because operational costs on this continent compare favourably with

those of the Far East. In fact, the principal source of the problem is that African factories are simply not big enough and lack the economies of scale to compete effectively. A lesson from history is instructive: The primary reason that Asia replaced Europe as textile supplier to the world was technology: Asian countries invested in newer technology that improved economies of scale to such an extent that the cost of shipping back to Europe (and America) became insignificant.

7. Africa can do the same. Lesson seven informs that textile processing technology has moved on and if governments on the continent could move away from trying to impose unrealistic capital and labour demands, a new African textile industry can and will succeed. If the continent invests in the very pinnacle of textile manufacturing machinery, it could significantly dilute the cost of producing one metre of fabric against one hour of operator labour.

Business case

McLachlan’s business case for textile manufacture in Africa illustrates this point. Specifically, he proposes constructing a fabric knitting, dyeing and finishing factory for an investment of around US$75 million. He envisages that such a plant would employ some 350 people and have the process capability of producing high volumes of complex fabrics and a wide range of colours.

Notably, such a factory within SADC would dramatically reduce the lead time for African customers seeking to stock the latest fashions. Presently, it takes about 150 days from order to delivery; an SADC factory – supported by ancillary garment producing industry such as that developing in Madagascar – could cut this to a third, with the commensurate positive effect on cash flow.

This information was gleaned from during an interview with Mano Moodley, chief sourcing officer at one of SADC’s largest clothing retailers, Edcon (Edgars Consolidated Stores Limited). Moodley intimated that the company could be very interested in procuring garments manufactured in Africa from African fabrics.

In order to access a sustainable portion of the available market share, the proposed factory would be required to produce 50 to 100 tons of dyed and finished weft knit fabric per week. This volume would vary according to the number of passes each batch must make through the dye house and should comprise not only cotton but also blends of Lycra, nylon and polyester. The dyeing and finishing process should be controlled through the application of Lean Six Sigma techniques and best practice automated processes.

At the same time, the factory could employ the latest green technologies in order to emit less carbon into the atmosphere and maximise the re-use of water and energy. Location near an existing hydroelectric facility should secure a preferential rate for electricity, and water, which can be taken from the natural source once and treated for reuse over and over. The use of solar technology for the non-critical processes would minimise the consumption of electricity. Eco-friendly dye machines could be commissioned in the factory to maximise productivity and minimise waste. All of these aspects would add to the marketability of African fabrics in a world consumed with environmental issues.

The global textile market is expected to grow by 25% by 2020, with the lion’s share of this production expected to be undertaken in Asia. There is no reason why Africa should be excluded from this massive opportunity. However, in order to be part of the growth in the textile market, this continent must create an environment that is conducive to investment in significant manufacturing capacity, not only in the production of raw materials, but also in knitting, dyeing and finishing factories as well as garment factories to add the final stage of value before the products are sent to market.

McLachlan believes that all the stars are perfectly aligned for Africa to get a slice of the action now, and a bigger slice in the future. The Chinese philosopher, Lao-tzu, once said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Will Africa take that step to revitalise its textile industry, first, and its economies, second? 

Article republished courtesy of African Trader magazine

Go to Part two

A contractors truck cruising North Road in Regents Park, Johannesburg.

Fast forward to today, after some three weeks of Pikitup worker strikes, the streets of Johannesburg are a mess – or, rather, they were. It seems that somebody on the Pikitup management team actually does have a clue. The company has apparently contracted private companies all over the city (and provided security) to try and clear some of the garbage littering our streets.

Alet Deysel, the owner of Jade-Waste, which is the company designated to clear the garbage in my area told me that all 40 of her staff volunteered to work today (Sunday) in order to do their bit. Presumably, once Pikitup have paid for the services they’ll all get a little something extra in their pay-packets. I also asked her about the car containing security personnel that accompanied each of her trucks and she said that was for protection in the event that the striking Pikitup workers take issue with the clean-up operations.

World class African City? Maybe, just maybe.

Volunteers clearing some of the garbage that has piled up since the Pikitup strike began.