I remember watching a documentary a long time ago about the way the textile industry has changed in Africa. Not remembering many detains, I decided to look it up. The textile industry in Africa in the 1960’s was booming. Uganda was the largest producer with 470,000 bales of cotton produced per year (Hattem J 2019). Many people worked in factories and produced clothing that would be shipped and used throughout Africa. In the 2015/2016 season, less than a quarter of that cotton was produced and 95 percent was shipped abroad (Hattem J 2019). This happened for a few reasons. Under British colonial rule, a system was set into place to have taxes to force farmers to meet cotton quotas and ones that did not were sent to jail. This produced massive amounts of cotton, but only for the private sector (Hattem J 2019). After the independence in 1962, the British left the industry without transitioning it over to Uganda. Through mismanagement, civil unrest, and economic downturn not only in Africa, but in import countries, open markets began to undercut the African textile industry. In stepped the second-hand clothing business. Companies were selling clothing in the United States and other countries for very cheap and people were buying them up and donating what they did not want to places like Goodwill and Salvation Army. People also think that donations are helping people, in the clothing department only 10 percent is sold and redistributed in the United States (Hattem J 2019). This means they will sell pallets of second-hand clothing to countries for cheap and in turn this clothing will be sold in the countries for cheaper than they can make and sell it. “Now, more than 80 percent of clothing purchases in Uganda are of secondhand garments.”( Hattem J 2019) This has led to textile factories shutting down and people all over Africa out of jobs with no returning in sight.
References:
Hattem, Julian (2018 April 19) Can “Made in Africa” Mend A Textile Industry Dominated By Throwaways?
Bright magazine:https://brightthemag.com/textile-secondhand-clothes-fashion-uganda-cotton-made-in-africa-20f83de98138
BBC News by Reality Check Team (2018 July 27th) Reality Check: Why some African countries don't want charity clothes
By Reality Check team
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44951670
Andrej Jakovlev
Rates of unemployment in South Africa were growing every year since the inception of the quarterly labor survey back in 2008. However, this year they reached a new height, as many as Thirty-Five percent of the population is out of work (Reuters, 2022). That is almost eight million people without the means to provide for their families.
Major contributors to unemployment are attributed to the Covid 19 pandemic when many businesses were forced to shut down permanently in the already unstable job market. However, the pandemic only eroded the job market more, as major underlined issues existed long before the pandemic.
The unstable electric grid, causes power losses to manufacturing companies, hinders performance, slows down production, and reduces revenues that secure the need for employees.
Lack of education. In many sub-Saharan African countries, at least half of people between the ages of fifteen to nineteen never attended school or dropped out before gaining basic literacy (Reuters, 2022). Educational systems help people to develop foundation skills such as literacy and numeracy, that will lay the foundation to further advancement.
Without basic education, technical and vocational skills such as carpentry, or computer science can be learned thru internships and work-placement programs, however, they require a strong school foundation.
To survive, young adults are forced to find any means of earning income. Most of the time jobs are less than desirable and lack decent working conditions (Reducing Youth Unemployment in Sub-Saharan Africa, n.d.).Only about a third of the seventy-four million jobs created in Africa were for people ages fifteen to twenty-fourth large groups of people could’ve contributed to the growth of the economy, given the job availability (Youth Employment in Africa (Africa), n.d.).
Education must be the focus of any nation, regardless of the economic stability and stage of development.
Strong education systems are a good investmentfor the government, as educated people can get jobs that pay enough to support a family and provide economic security (A Well-Educated Workforce Is Key to State Prosperity, n.d.). This leads to a closed cycle, as working people who can afford to buy goods support local businesses and the economy.
References:
Reducing Youth Unemployment in Sub-Saharan Africa. (n.d.). PRB. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.prb.org/resources/reducing-youth-unemployment-in-sub-saharan-africa/
Reuters. (2022, March 29).South Africa’s unemployment rate hits new record high in Q4 2021. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africas-unemployment-rate-hits-new-record-high-q4-2021-2022-03-29/
A Well-Educated Workforce Is Key to State Prosperity. (n.d.). Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.epi.org/publication/states-education-productivity-growth-foundations/
Youth employment in Africa (Africa). (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.ilo.org/africa/areas-of-work/youth-employment/lang--en/index.htm