Since Cancun, the mobilisation against the distorting and unfair subsidies for cotton paid by some developed countries has been strengthened by various aspects: the consolidation of the African Cotton Association (A.C.A.) and the creation of the Association des Producteurs de Coton d’Afrique (AproCA – Association of African Cotton Producers); the decision given on the appeal by the Disputes Panel of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in favour of Brazil; the growing questioning by public opinion in the United States of the huge subsides granted to a tiny minority of cotton producers; as well as the new proposal on working methods in negotiations by the African group in Geneva.

For all that, the slowness noted in dealing with the “cotton dossier” is in stark contrast to the priority accorded to the millennium goals, the G8 declarations on strategies for poverty reduction in Africa and more especially to the spirit of the “Doha round”, also called the “development round”. Tens of millions of small African producers can no longer earn a decent living from their work and are sinking each day a little deeper into insecurity, despite their professionalism and the quality of their production. Similarly, industrial jobs in numerous secondary towns and economies of whole regions linked to the cotton industry are greatly threatened. The existence even of these industries is in danger.

However, the context has never been so favourable as today for the definitive resolution of the crisis, which the producers and cotton societies of Africa are undergoing.

This is why the African Cotton Association, the Association of African Cotton Producers (AProCA), the NGO Enda Tiers Monde and the Seatini Institute (Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute), together with the support of Oxfam International and DFID (Department for International Development), and a large panel of actors with an interest in the development of African cotton industries, met together at Saly-Portugal in Senegal, the 6th and 7th May 2005, with the aim of creating a strategy for overcoming the crisis in these industries.

This pan-African forum has strengthened the enthusiastic mobilisation by different actors to obtain the immediate implementation of concrete and workable responses, leading up to the Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in order to prevent the disappearance of the African cotton industries.

The pan-African workshop in Saly particularly underlined the urgency of carrying out activities that are concrete and tangible to improve the trade reforms of certain Western cotton producing countries, to assist the African industries in the crisis which they are going through and finally to support the sustainable development of the industries by guaranteeing minimum prices to the producers in order to assure their income.

We, the producers, cotton associations, Ambassadors to the WTO, representatives of Trade Ministries, and NGO and Civil Society representatives from all over the African continent, have decided to pursue our mobilisation and launch a loud appeal to public opinion and decision-makers for more justice and fairness, so that they take into account the two following priority axes:

• The increase and strengthening of strategic alliances in order to support the sustainable development of the African cotton industries and agriculture through:
o the vigorous resolute and active engagement of the African Union and of all the member states with regard to the cotton sectoral initiative;
o support and backing, through the most appropriate means, for the permanent African missions to the WTO in Geneva responsible for this dossier as well as for the producers and African cotton associations;
o raising awareness amongst international public opinion, particularly in America, on the devastating effects of cotton subsidies on African economies and the need to respect WTO agreements, by backing particularly the diplomatic representations in Washington, Geneva and Brussels;
o the creation of an emergency support fund for the African cotton industry.

• The consolidation of competitivity and quality of the African cotton industries through:
o the promotion of cotton research that is better adpated and of quality.
o the lowering of agricultural input costs in the framework of wider improvement and productivity strategies;
o the development of a processing industry (spinning, weaving, tailoring).