EU-Africa Partnership on Cotton

The EU-Africa Partnership on Cotton was established to address the concerns of African cotton value chains strongly affected by the decrease in cotton prices during the 1990’s and beyond 2000’s.

On the occasion of the Forum of Paris, in 2004, the European Union and African countries approved the creation of the partnership as well as its action plan, which gave way to an Action Framework in February 2010.

The partnership comprises of two aspects: a ‘Trade’ component which aims at establishing more equitable trade within the Doha Development Round, and a ‘Development’ component which consists in enhancing the competitiveness and value addition of African cotton by optimizing the impact on the producer’s yields.

The Action Framework implements the objectives of the Trade and Development components in 6 strategic axes:

1. Improvement of the capacities to develop, monitor, assess and update national and regional cotton strategies
2. Improvement of the institutional environment, internal organization and efficiency of cotton value chains
3. Improvement of the competitiveness of the cotton value chains of Africa
4. Reduction in the vulnerability of cotton value chains
5. Increase in value addition generated by the cotton value chains
6. Strengthening, efficiency and effectiveness of coordination at international, regional and national levels.

The Comité d’orientation et de suivi du Partenariat UE-Afrique sur le coton (COS-Coton) has been established as the Partnership steering committee. As such, COS-Coton has to manage the needs of the value chain stakeholders, to ensure coherence and ownership of the Action Framework and related programmes, including the cotton component of the All ACP Agricultural Commodities Programme.