Apparel / Textiles & Accessories

Africa is becoming a major clothing production and supply center in the world. Experts from the Asia Sustainable Textiles Summit last month said that due to the cost saturation of the former continent, textile manufacturing is now shifting from Asia to Africa. In the first quarter of this year (Q1), the export of Africa's clothing international trade exceeded US $2 billion for the first time.

During this period, the shipment volume reached 2.083 billion US dollars, and declined slightly to 1.953 billion US dollars in the second quarter of 2022. Due to the pandemic, the export volume of international trade in the second quarter of 2020 has dropped to US $764 million. According to the market data of FTF, Africa exported clothing worth 1.38 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2021.

Clothing exports recovered rapidly from the interruption in the second quarter of 2020, reaching 1.667 billion dollars in the third quarter and 1.597 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of the same year. In 2021, Africa's international trade exports in the first quarter will be 1.674 billion US dollars, 1.703 billion US dollars in the second quarter, 1.923 billion US dollars in the third quarter and 1.989 billion US dollars in the fourth quarter. These figures show that Africa's exports are gradually increasing. According to the data of TexPro, with the export value of clothing of the African continent in 2021 of 7.291 billion dollars, in 2020 of 5.409 billion dollars, in 2019 of 6.561 billion dollars and in 2018 of 6.442 billion dollars, the annual international trade exports also show a gradual growth.

At the summit held in New Delhi in September 2022, experts believed that higher production costs were driving the textile manufacturing industry towards emerging markets. In the early days, developed countries were major manufacturing centers. However, the industry has shifted to developing countries, and Asia has become an important supplier of international trade. Now, the industry is shifting to less developed countries, so Africa is becoming a new manufacturing center.