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Can African countries build competitive fiber-to-garment industries fit for the 21st century?

27 February 2023

The textile and apparel industry is a globalised industry characterised by a high degree of dependency and fragmentation in global supply chains. From the mid-20^th century, cotton textile and apparel manufacturing production relocated from industrialised to developing countries, particularly in Asia, and was quickly followed by the emergence of the petrochemical industry and synthetic fibre production in East Asian countries, while South Asia continued to focus on cotton and natural fibres. Changes in international trade over the past 30 years fostered the textile and apparel global value chain dynamic. These changes were marked by opening trade borders, lowering tariffs, tax breaks or subsidies offered by various governments, and free trade agreements. Low labour costs and lower production costs have shaped the decisions of global actors to relocate their operations from one country to another.

Current global trends are set to transform the global value chains of textiles and apparel again. These trends include (1)increasing production costs in China, (2) the drive to shorten supply chains post-Covid pandemic through nearshoring and seeking countries with yarn-to-garment (or vertical) production capabilities, and (3) the sustainability shift. These trends are leading global apparel buyers to diversify their sourcing away from China and Asia more generally and to consider new supply bases.

Global apparel buyers are no longer concerned only with cost, quality and speed to market when making sourcing decisions. They now must balance those criteria with sustainability goals. The climate crisis and the high contribution of the global fashion industry to greenhouse gas emissions are putting pressure on industry players to make radical changes in production processes. While consumers are increasingly demanding sustainability, the greatest pressure is coming from European country governments and the European Union Commission. Notably, existing and expected EU regulations have increased market demand for alternative sustainable fibres and textile production technologies.

As a result, new fibre and recycling technologies are in a phase of fast innovation to produce more sustainable and circular man-made fibres. The raw material for clothing production will become manufactured fibres that rely on advancements in chemical technologies and biofabrication. Virgin cotton will be of less importance, as it is replaced by natural fibres that are less resource intensive and by man-made cellulosic fibres that feel like cotton. In the transition stage, cotton will move to organic and regenerative as well as become blended with other natural and man-made cellulosic fibres. Future fibres will have a high technology content and require licensing technology, both man-made cellulosic fibres and the new wave of synthetics that seek to replace polymers.

Currently, African countries export very little of what is traded within apparel global supply chains and across the African continent, except in the case of cotton, but import a large amount of what the rest of the world produces. Africa’s fabric and apparel production is biased towards cotton, especially in yarn and fabric production, with little participation in production and export of man-made fiber, yarn and fabric. Most apparel exports from the continent come from North Africa, followed far behind by East and Southern Africa. Apparel exports from the African continent go largely to Europe and then North America.

Productive capabilities in the sector in Africa remain low as the continent is largely a net importer of textile and apparel products. A couple of African countries have developed industrial capabilities in textiles and apparel, but most of it has been in the apparel segment and relies heavily on imported fabrics from Asian countries. A significant share of African apparel exports comes from North Africa, followed far behind by East and Southern Africa. West and Central African countries do not have significant apparel exports, and West Africa predominantly exports cotton fibres.

Most apparel imports on the continent come from China. Chinese imports have largely displaced imports from other Asian countries and the rest of the world but have not substantially displaced intra-African trade, which was already small in 2000 but has shrunk even further. Currently, only 8% of Africa’s textile and apparel imports are supplied by other African suppliers.

African countries have the opportunity to build sustainable textile and apparel industries from the start, which can give them a competitive advantage. The cost of renewable energy technology is falling and renewable energy technologies to power industries are evolving. New fibre and recycling technologies also offer a window of opportunity to leapfrog into the next generation of technologies. Taking advantage of this window of opportunity requires that African governments look forward and not backward, that they think in terms of building new and not rebuilding the existing textile industries.

African textile and apparel domestic and regional value chains should be based on mastering the next generation of fibre production and recycling technologies. Such a strategy involves taking risks to invest in building the knowledge and skills required for this new technology, but not taking risks will mean that African countries miss the opportunity to move to the technological frontier. Furthermore, African countries can go beyond becoming competitive in the new textile and apparel global supply chains but also use them to drive broader green industrialization processes.

Such a strategy also involves building diversified regional textile bases as well as regional value chains, which can harness the efforts of more economies and larger market demand as well as create a stronger platform of capabilities with which to engage in global export markets. A diversified regional textile base would make it easier for locally owned apparel firms to emerge and provide the opportunity to move into higher value products as well as move into design of fabrics.

The capital requirements of establishing textile mills and vertically integrated factories from spinning to fabric to garment are very high, and there is limited knowledge in most African countries on how to operate the most modern textile equipment and produce export-quality fabric. Therefore, the first wave of new investments to create a textile base will have to be led by foreign investment. Industrial policy should not be just about attracting foreign investment by providing what they want but also attracting the kind of foreign direct investment that can build globally competitive textile and apparel industries. For example, the Togolese government has started implementing its strategy centres on an eco-industrial park (PIA) with vertically integrated knit factories established through a public-private partnership with Arise Integrated Industrial Platform.

But foreign investment must lead to technology transfer in the form of skilled textile technicians and managers as well as the business acumen side of organising and managing textile and apparel firms. A key part of the industrial policy approach should include assisting local firms in leveraging technology from these foreign firms. Technology is not actually ‘transferred’ but rather must be ‘leveraged’, and to do so; local firms must build their capabilities. The actual process of technology leverage takes place through various forms of investments and contractual relations between foreign and local firms.

For more information and analysis of African textile and apparel industries, industrial policy, and implications for on-going negotiations in the African Continental Free Trade Area, see:

Lindsay Whitfield, “Current Capabilities and Future Potential of African Textile and Apparel Value Chains: Focus on West Africa, CBDS Working Paper 2022/3, Centre for Business and Development Studies, Copenhagen Business School.

CBDS Working Paper, Policy Brief & Podcast

New Research Project on Environmental Maritime Governance in Kenya: Investigating Policies, Practices and Prospects for the Abatement of Air Emissions from International Shipping

16 January 2023

By René Taudal Poulsen

Although the international shipping industry accounts for nearly three per cent of global Greenhouse Gas emissions and is a major emitter of air pollutants, it was left out of the Paris Agreement in 2015. Due to the peculiarities of global ship operations and the high mobility of ships, the question of how to reduce international shipping emissions has been referred to the United Nations’ dedicated maritime agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London. The IMO has adopted several global maritime conventions for environmental protection and maritime safety, the oldest of which came into existence after the sinking of the “Titanic” in 1912.27Today the IMO’s MARPOL Convention is the main international vehicle for maritime environmental protection.

In response to the signing of the Paris Agreement, the IMO adopted an initial strategy for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping in 2018. The strategy expressed the goal of halving emissions by 2050 relative to 2008, but this goal has proven to misalign with the Paris’ Agreements 1.5 Degrees Celsius objective, and international shipping emissions continue to rise. The IMO members have therefore started negotiating a revision of the strategy, which could potentially strengthen the levels of ambition and pave the way for new types of global, maritime climate regulation. In these negotiations, much is at stake for the 175 IMO member countries members, and some of the classical divides between developed and developing countries about burden sharing and emissions reduction, known from the global climate negotiations in the UNFCCC, also surface in the IMO. Nevertheless, negotiations also differ from UNFCCC because the global emissions from mobile ships are difficult to allocate to national emissions inventories. The IMO has also prided itself as the first international organization to set global “mandatory energy efficiency measures for any transport sector” in 2011, signaling to the world that it sees itself as having sufficient capacity to address the difficult regulatory discussions.

For developing countries, climate change mitigation and the IMO negotiations are highly important for many reasons. The countries suffer from climate change and have a high dependence on cheap seaborne transportation for their imports and exports. Many of them have large ports, and some register a large part of the world fleet. Stricter environmental regulation would benefit developing countries in the form of climate change mitigation as well as improvements of local air quality in port cities, but could potentially affect trade through rising freight rates. Another important matter to keep in mind is the ongoing IMO discussions concerning the possible introduction of a global market-based measure, such as a global tax on marine fuel. Such a mechanism could potentially generate very large funds while facilitating the uptake of low-emission fuels. It is expected that the IMO member states will discuss such measures in the coming three years, and discussions on how to use funding are likely to be intense and difficult. For some developing countries, not least in Africa, new business and job opportunities could also come from the production of low-emission marine fuels from wind and solar energy.

Despite the obvious high stakes, the maritime GHG discussions have not attracted so much attention in many African countries. Research on environmental governance and global environmental politics has also neglected the engagement of developing countries in maritime emission abatement efforts, focusing only on their presence in the UNFCCC context.

The low profile of African countries in the IMO contrasts with many developed countries, which often have vested interests in maritime trade, ship-owning, marine equipment manufacturing, or shipbuilding. They send large delegations to IMO meetings, with representatives both from their environmental protection and transportation agencies, and they frequently make submissions to the IMO and set the agenda for the meetings. In contrast, some African countries rarely or never go to IMO meetings. Some send small delegations to London, but change delegation membership very frequently. Most African countries very rarely make submissions to the IMO, if ever. The relatively low African profile in the IMO also contrasts with the same countries’ strong engagement in the global climate negotiations in the UNFCCC. Previous research has shown that developing countries in the Pacific Ocean, which are suffering from climate change and depend on seaborne transportation, gained substantial influence on IMO’s initial GHG strategy in 2018. These countries engaged effectively in discussions in London and gained a strong voice despite the small sizes of their economies and populations. Influence does not appear to be proportional to GDP per capita or the size of the national merchant fleet, but it is clear that a stronger African participation in the IMO and the development of more inclusive maritime governance will be critical in the reduction of maritime emissions.

In our new research project Environmental Maritime Governance in Kenya (EMG-K), we study Kenya’s engagement in the IMO’s negotiations. Kenya has a special position in the IMO, being a member of the IMO’s Council, which is the IMO’s executive organ. The country is home to the gateway port of Mombasa, which serves an extensive hinterland in South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Having historically focused on land-based resources, over the last decade Kenya has paid increasing attention to its ocean economy, viewing it as a key enabler of its national development blueprint and Mombasa port is a crucial infrastructure for the entire East African region. However, Kenya has very rarely made submissions to the IMO. Like many developing countries, the country faces the challenge of facilitating economic development via its growing maritime trades while protecting the global climate and local air quality. Kenya’s maritime engagement encapsulates one of the major dilemmas relating to international trade and environmental governance: facilitating economic development while protecting the global climate and local air quality.

The EMG-K project, established by a Kenyan-Danish research consortium, studies how Kenya engages in the IMO and will suggest ways to make maritime governance mechanisms more inclusive and enable Kenya and other African countries to participate more effectively in the IMO negotiations and maritime emission reduction efforts. We will employ ethnographic research methods, with observation studies during meetings in London and Kenya. We will also study the IMO’s archives and interview key stakeholders involved in these processes. We will suggest ways to strengthen Kenya’s maritime governance capacity and support Kenya’s efforts to mitigate climate change and improve local air quality. In doing so, we will drive forward the literature on environmental governance and global environmental politics from a developing country perspective and shed new light on international shipping.

The Kenyan-Danish research consortium behind the project consists of the Centre for Business and Development Studies (CBDS) at Copenhagen Business School, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Environmental Law & Policy (CASELAP) at the University of Nairobi, and the Institute for Environmental Law and Governance (ILEG) in Nairobi. More than ten staff members from the three partner institutions are involved in the project, and the Danida Fellowship Centre has kindly provided funding for the project, which runs over three years.

Why business schools need more field-based courses

24 October 2022

By Thilde Langevang, Maribel Blasco and Søren Jeppesen

*CBS* *and MUBS* *Students gathered during the field trip in Uganda*

In today’s complex world, working life is often characterized by uncertainty, discomfort, and complexity. Students who wish to follow careers in international business or work for organisations in the Global South need skills and abilities to work in different cultures, cope with physically and emotionally challenging situations, to learn from and collaborate effectively with others very different from oneself, to tolerate unpredictability and failure, and to engage in problem-solving under trying conditions.

Yet most business school education is not exactly stellar at enabling such learning. At business schools, the most common experiential activities still involve classroom-based activities such as guest lecturers, case-based learning, role-plays and simulations. While such tools may make business students more knowledgeable and improve their decision-making abilities, and social and collaborative skills, they do not usually equip students to cope with highly uncertain environments and non-routine challenges, since students generally remain in their “safe” classrooms and known environments.

In a recently published paper we argue that field-based courses can help to develop vital abilities in students. Our paper is based on students’ experiences during a 3-week immersive field-based course in Uganda, held in connection with the MSc program Business and Development Studies at Copenhagen Business School. The course, which has run for 10 years, involves CBS students collaborating in groups with students from Makerere University Business School (MUBS). The course was developed following a request from a group of students and aims to offer students an opportunity to apply theories and methods from business and development studies to a practical situation, to strengthen their intercultural skills, and to sensitize them to the challenges of doing fieldwork and data collection in a developing country context.

Based on data gathered from students over several iterations of the field course, we draw on experiential learning theory to show how during the course a learning space was generated that produced three main types of disruption to students’ taken-for-granted habits and assumptions, namely: intense sensory impressions and sensations, loss of predictability and control, and learning interdependency on others.

For many students, the experience of immersion in a radically different context constituted a multisensory learning experience characterized by immediacy, which prompted reflections about their own limitations as well as reflection on others’ lives. One student, for example, noted in a focus group discussion:

You have the chance to really live an experience in a developing country and actually you can see, you can touch the life there and feel it. You can realize what you can do, and you can start to think about their way of life, you see, and it changes your mind probably. So I think also the other courses can help you, but not like this one.

Various aspects of the radically different field course context caused students to experience a loss of predictability and control. The students participating in our field course described loss of control over their ability to plan their work effectively due to contingencies, difficulties getting around, different conceptions of time and their lack of knowledge about the context. As one student expressed:

It is quite hectic when you are going from place to place and things are unplanned or they are planned and they change. . . You have to make the most out of it while you are there.

Oliver: One that just came to mind is the difficulty of planning. Where to go, whom to interview, what kind of information can you expect from people, things just change in the matter of 3 minutes. And you could have planned for weeks, and it just….

Students explicitly compared the unpredictability, flexibility, and lack of control they experienced on the field course with their tendency to stick to a “recipe-like” approach to learning back home characterized by predictability, safety, deliberately constraining their impulse to innovate, and focusing predominantly on their grade, One student said:

No offense to academics but at one point you learn to disseminate your 1,000 pages of curriculum to what is important. You learn to go to your exams and do it well and how to do it and to produce a result. It is not a recipe but you learn how to do that process. There was no recipe for this trip, it was just a bit like here is the deep end, jump in and see if you can swim.

The CBS students also came to realize through experience that to complete their assignment successfully, they would have to rely on their Ugandan peers and leverage each other’s respective differences. One student recounted:

You cannot always get your way, but that is also good if it leads to a discussion. Different academic backgrounds and learning styles impact research to a great extent. It has definitely been challenging at times when frustration has taken over, but I believe I have learnt that different approaches all have their pros and cons. Working with non-Western students is very valuable, since the CBS students came with prejudiced ideas about what Ugandan entrepreneurs are like. The MUBS students helped us with expanding our view and taught us about the Ugandan way of life.

The article offers a model that describes the disruptions and resulting dissonance, and conceptualizes how different elements of the course triggered the experiential learning cycle and desired learning outcomes.

You can read the article here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10525629211072571

Thilde Langevang and Søren Jeppesen are Associate Professors at the Centre for Business and Development Studies within the Department of Management, Society and Communication at CBS and have been co-teaching the field course described in the blog since 2012. Maribel Blasco is Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Society and Communication at CBS and has expertise in management learning and higher education, notably at business schools. They have jointly carried out research about the field course students learning experiences.

Going Against the Tide: Towards Binding Environmental Regulation of Mining in Chile

12 May 2022

by Johanna Järvelä & Lotta Aho

What happens when a country moves from purely voluntary regulation towards binding laws? In our research paper we examine how the changes in Chilean environmental regulation affected the mining conflicts in the country.

In Chile, neoliberal policies were implemented to a great extent during 1970’s and 80’s and the legacy of these policies was an almost absent environmental regulation until 2010. Given this background, Chile represented an interesting case to study what were the outcomes of the absence of environmental regulation and ensuing privatized regulation to the environment and society in Chile. And why, especially in time when global tendency was more towards deregulation, Chile was taking the path of re-regulation.

The first environmental institutions were founded in 1995, but it was not until 2010 that true change in environmental sector happened because new environmental regulation was introduced and actually enforced for the first time. Even though many of the bigger mining companies were following international voluntary standards, they started to get fines from the Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente (SMA) and the amount of the fines given out by SMA grew each year. It was not because companies were becoming more irresponsible but rather that their ‘business as usual’ was not tolerated anymore and the international voluntary standards proved to be inadequate for environmental protection.

The cowboy practices of past, known for example as ‘senor con el maletin’, the man with the (money) briefcase, were not only condoned no more but also started to cause problems for the companies engaging in these practices. There was a momentum in Chile when simultaneously environmental regulation and institutions were strengthened, and environmental awareness and the number of mining conflicts were increasing. The root cause of the conflicts was environmental breaches that had been happening long before the environmental authorities started to fine companies for them. However, the new environmental laws and growing civil society movements offered the people a stronger position in making the claims and opportunities to seek environmental justice through courts along with bringing the claims more publicity. This in turn forced the companies to not just launch new corporate sustainability programs but also improve their communication with the communities.

The main takeaway from this study is that regulation in itself – be it voluntary or public – is a dead letter without proper implementation and enforcement. To achieve any real change the states need to ensure there is a separate institution to monitor that the laws are abided and sanction those who breach the laws. From private-public interactions perspective, it was the international private regulation together with civil society campaigns and need to align with OECD country standards that in the end instigated the change in Chilean regulation. As more diverse actors and interests became part of the powerplay deciding the regulatory outcome, it helped to de-capture of the political system of environmental regulation from purely industry interest.

To read more about this institutional change and it’s impacts read the recent working paper by Johanna and Lotta: Going Against the Tide : Towards Binding Environmental Regulation of Mining in Chile.

Labour Codes of Conduct: Workers’ Rights and Unions in Southern Africa’s Garment Industry

21 February 2022

By Søren Jeppesen, CBDS, MSC, CBS and Andries Bezuidenhout, Department of Development Studies, University of Fort Hare, South Africa

*Professor Søren Jeppesen observes a truck leaving factory gates in Maseru, Lesotho*

The garment industry is often portrayed as an industry that has the potential to bring about large-scale economic and social changes in countries in the Global South. Bangladesh and China are examples of this, where garment manufacturing led to increased levels of employment and further industrial development. However, smaller economies can also benefit from the industry by establishing a significant number of formal jobs in contexts otherwise dominated by informality and subsistence agriculture. Lesotho and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) in Southern Africa are such examples, where some 45.000 and 22.000 jobs have been created since the late 1990s/early 2000s. The bulk of the garments made in these new factories is exported to the US and to the two countries’ South African neighbours.

untitled image — *Map of Southern Africa – with Lesotho and Eswatini highlighted*

However, the garment industry also has a different and somewhat darker side. Significant parts of the industry are characterized by tough working conditions and extremely low wages. This, for obvious reasons, attracts criticism from workers, trade unions, consumer organizations, NGOs, and human rights organizations. Lesotho and Eswatini are no exception to this. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, campaigns about working conditions in these factories undertaken by workers and unions, supported by student movements and unions in the Global North, led to some major retail brands introducing labour codes of conduct to be complied with by their suppliers. These codes, some argue, will ensure proper working conditions and wages not lower than the national minimum level.

Particularly in Lesotho, the implementation of these codes of conduct led to some improvements. To be sure, the country marketed itself as a ‘sweat free’ production destination after these codes had been implemented by major fashion brands. These improvements include better lighting and temperature control in factories. Lesotho, also called the Mountain Kingdom, has extremely cold winters and seething hot summers. However, there is an argument that this focus on ‘outcome rights’ is at the expense of workers themselves voicing their own concerns, also referred to as ‘process rights’ (for more on ‘outcome rights’ and ‘process rights’ see Mick Blowfield’s article published nearly two decades ago in Third World Quarterly *). In addition, while some basic health and safety conditions have improved, wages remain low. The result is that workers and trade unions continue to dispute the sustainability of their working conditions.

The situation in Lesotho and Eswatini points to a number of salient issues regarding options for workers and trade unions in similar contexts, which we outline below. Three issues stand out:

Although codes of conduct fulfil some minimum conditions according to national law, these codes do not necessarily ensure ‘good working conditions and proper (living or decent) wages’.
Although consumers in the Global North may think that a label in a T-Shirt stating that certain standards have been met and social responsibilities upheld, the groups mainly impacted in the Global South may think differently.
While minor improvements in working conditions and (minimum) wages might be celebrated as ‘major achievements’ at one stage, the benefits and experience impact in the Global South can be limited and short-lived. This, in turn, calls for long-term and a more sustained effort internationally and nationally, if the process of outsourced production is to lead to more substantive benefits for workers, and for companies and economies in the Global South.

The entry of the garment industry in Lesotho and Eswatini & the response from workers and unions

Garment manufacturing started in Lesotho and Eswatini in the 1970s and 1980s when South African companies set up production in the two countries. The new employment options were generally welcomed, but as Asian, mainly Taiwanese, companies joined the industry, discontent grew. These manufacturers were under pressure to produce large orders at cut-throat profit margins. Supervisors often did not speak local languages and did not understand local behavioural norms. Workers felt offended by what was considered to be harsh language by foreign supervisors and protests were staged. As the industry rapidly expanded due to additional South African, but in particular Taiwanese investments, additional protests followed. Now issues emerged that also related to long working hours, in warm/humid and poor ventilated factories, and low wages.

Trade unions engaged in collective organizing of workers, though encountering several obstacles in reaching a sufficient level of representation to be granted rights to negotiate with management on behalf of workers. Both Lesotho and Eswatini have labour laws that technically comply with the International Labour Organisation’s core conventions, but the proverbial devil is often in the detail. First of all, in Lesotho, labour laws stipulate that such rights can only be granted when organizing 50% of the workers in a workplace. This threshold for representation is extremely difficult to achieve. In Eswatini, strikes are technically legal, but long ‘cooling-off periods’ stipulated by labour law makes it hard to follow through on industrial action. Secondly, in both countries several unions sprung up, which led to internal competition and union rivalry. In Lesotho, this even further limited the chances of even one union being able to organize 50% of the workers. Thirdly, due to intimidation, extremely low wages (which makes paying union dues difficult), as well as the fear of losing their jobs, workers were reluctant to join unions. So, limited progress materialized.

*Workers leaving a garment* *factory in Maseru, Lesotho*

The picture seemed to change as student organisations and unions in the US became aware of the conditions in Lesotho and to some extent Eswatini. They started to engage the US retailers and brands buying the products from Southern Africa and campaigning in favour of improved conditions in the factories. In Eswatini, where a larger share of the production went to South Africa, the unions started to collaborate with South African counterparts (unions from the Congress of South African Trade Unions, or COSATU). Eventually, the US retailers and brands found the media attention and queries in the US to be too cumbersome. They accepted that some improvements needed to take place and a number of codes of conduct were signed between the US buyers and the mainly Taiwanese garment producers.

These labour codes of conduct led to some improvements in wages, as well as safety and health conditions. An industry initiative in Lesotho attempted to pool resources from different companies to respond to high levels of HIV/AIDS among employees. These initiatives were celebrated in the media in the US, but soon the workers and unions in the two countries realized that the wages continued to be (way) below a living wage. Garment manufacturers expected their orders to increase due to them complying with codes of conduct, but this was not the case. Some union activists felt that the codes made minor improvements in terms of outcomes, but did not significantly address extremely low wages. As a result, protests resumed – and continue to do so as workers fail to see significant improvement.

The challenges encountered

The implementation of codes of conduct indicates some level of attention to the particular economic and social issues in the countries where factories are located. There is certainly some level of social responsibility among both brands and retailers as the industry’s major buyers. But the question remains whether these improvements will spill over into sustained changes and more meaningful improvements. Workers and unions have quite legitimate claims — who in a Danish setting would not acknowledge the right to a living wage? — but industry conditions point in a different direction. These conditions are linked to the competitive nature of the industry, dynamics related to the states where production is located, as well as the limits to consumer activism under such conditions.

*Informal trading stores in front of a garment factory in Maseru, Lesotho*

From a global perspective, fierce competition between countries to attract garment manufacturers to set up shop means that the typical wage paid is low. Wage increases beyond a certain level can price a country out of the market and producers may move elsewhere (on this, see Pietra Rivoli’s now classic book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy **).

In addition, and also importantly, workers and their unions have little backing from the state in the two countries. As mentioned above, on balance the labour laws are in support of the garment manufacturers and working against the interest of the workers and their unions. More importantly, the governments of the two countries have a clear agenda in support of the garment manufacturers as part of their investment policy. The outcome of this has been a foreign-owned industry with little link to local businesses and markets. There certainly is the potential that the presence of the industry could assist in building locally owned businesses, but little effort to bring this about through industrial policy. Rather, state intervention is directed at tax breaks for investors, the provision of factory shells in industrial parks, as well as the promise of labour at competitive wage rates. Accordingly, the labour side has been met with a narrative of ‘we should make sure not to scare away the investors’ (understood as ‘we should not ask for too high wages’) – or as framed in the Eswatini context: ‘The foreign investors are like birds who can easily fly away’. In both countries, strikes are routinely met with police violence.

Finally, the awareness of the ‘critical consumers’ and to some extent the ‘critical/supportive’ media in the Global North tends to be short-lived. While both groups can be mobilized for a cause for some time, both tend to turn attention elsewhere within a short time. Consumers feel assured that the social responsibilities are actually making a difference and tend not to follow up on their earlier concerns. Media tends to move on to the next ‘hot topic’ and similarly not follow up on earlier inquiries. Hence, the initial gains made based on attention, joint collaboration and pressures in the Global North and in the Global South wane, leaving workers and unions to continue their fight alone (see Gay Seidman’s book Beyond the Boycott: Labour Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism for more on this ***). The bottom-line in Lesotho and Eswatini, unfortunately, is one of limited and insufficient change leaving the workers with non-living wages and a lot to be desired regarding working conditions in general.

Ways ahead

An analysis that only points to the structural constraints to improving the working conditions and lives of workers in these garment factories runs the risk of ignoring their own efforts to bring about change. Despite the constraints on the potential outcome of the years of struggle, workers and unions have made progress and continue to push for decent work and living wages. In Lesotho, unions often strategically use contact with fashion brands to put pressure on local manufacturers and they have also put political pressure on the state to increase the minimum wage. Unions also formed a single union called the Independent Democratic Union of Lesotho (IDUL), although smaller rivals still muddy the waters of solidarity. In Eswatini, rival unions have also come together to form the Amalgamated Trade Unions of Swaziland (ATUSWA) and have used international pressure to force the state to recognise them as legitimate unions when the government refused to register the newly formed union. The history shows that options for positive gains do exist, especially when based on international collaboration and an ability to create international attention to the issues at stake.

Here we could highlight that proper consumer awareness in Denmark and in South Africa can potentially have significant influence on the situation, but this influence also depends on a more careful understanding of power dynamics in the industry. These power dynamics relate to both the cut-throat nature of competition in the industry and local repression by governments. Hence, activism in the Global North also has to be focused on strengthening internal workers’ organisation and not be focused on ‘outcome rights’ at the expense of ‘process rights’. In the end, workers should be able to voice their interests, rather than being the beneficiaries of ‘social responsibility’. In both countries, the unions have been able to overcome former differences and set up common unions – an important step towards securing the rights of their members.

The blog draws on a longer-term collaboration between the authors, which presently is supported by funding from the Danish Free Research Funds (in Danish: Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond – DFF) through its Society and Business arm. The funding is allocated for an ‘International Research Stay’ for Søren Jeppesen at University of Fort Hare, South Africa with a focus on: ‘Understanding the Role of Business in Development: The Garment Industry in Southern Africa and Enclave Development.’ For joint publications, see below.

Søren Jeppesen is an Associate Professor in Business & Development Studies (see: www.cbs.dk/en/staff/sjmsc). His main research areas includes CSR, SMEs and Entrepreneurship in developing countries with an emphasis on Southern and Eastern Africa. He works on issues regarding local factors which influence the development and growth potential of developing country firms (or lack of same). One of his major research activities concerns the importance of Codes of Conduct for working conditions in the textiles and clothing industry in Southern Africa (in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini).Andries Bezuidenhout is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. His main research areas include an interest in precarious labour, labour markets, labour movements and development policy. He is the co-author of Grounding globalization: labour in the age of insecurity (2008, Blackwells) and co-editor of the forthcoming volume Critical engagement with public sociology: Perspectives from the Global South (2022, Bristol University Press).

Joint Publications:

Bezuidenhout, A. and Jeppesen, S. (2011). ‘Between State, Market and Society: Labour Codes of Conduct in the Southern African Garment Industry.’ Development Southern Africa, Vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 653-668.
Jeppesen, S and Bezuidenhout, A. (2019). ‘Swaziland: The Garment Industry in its Economic, Political and Social Context.’ Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business School [wp] 2019, 51 p. (CBDS Working Paper Series, No. 4, 2019).
Jeppesen, S. and Bezuidenhout, A. (2019). ‘Lesotho: The Garment Industry in its Economic, Political and Social Context.’ Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business School [wp] 2019, 50 p. (CBDS Working Paper Series, No. 3, 2019).

References/Further reading:

*Blowfield M (1999) Ethical trade: A review of developments and issues. Third World Quarterly 20(4): 753-770.
**Rivoli P (2005) The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
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