Cotton and textiles industries in Tanzania: the failures of liberalisation

Andrew Coulson

Review of African Political Economy, 2016, vol. 43, issue 0, 41-59

Abstract: This article uses the story of cotton cultivation in Tanzania to analyse critically the processes of liberalisation and expose the failure of markets to reward quality production. It starts by summarising the technological requirements to grow the crop. It then shows how cotton was central to industrialisation, in Britain and elsewhere. In Tanzania, cotton is grown on small farms and so the article then summarises how small farmers make choices and minimise risks. This creates the context for outline histories, first of cotton growing, and then of textile industries in Tanzania, before turning to the impact of structural adjustment and liberalisation in the late 1980s and 1990s which led to increases in production but losses in quality and price. The article draws conclusions from this about the role of agriculture in processes of economic transformation and the need for institutions which represent the economic interests of small farmers.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056244.2016.1214112 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:43:y:2016:i:0:p:41-59

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2016.1214112

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().