White gold, poor country

A trip to the cotton fields of Benin

We had been warned - "The country is ugly, and the further north you go, the uglier it gets," explained a friend of mine who had lived for some time in Benin. We had been on the road for five hours, heading north from Cotonou, and despite this warning we were still fascinated by the view from our off-road vehicle. True, the countryside was not exactly varied - in fact it was completely flat, with just a big bare stony hill now and then, looking very much like a sleeping elephant. But the plains stretched from the road all the way to the horizon, rich with luxuriant vegetation and every shade of green - tall grasses, and beyond them palm branches and banana plants, with great Shea and Afzelia trees towering over them. And below them were swarms of people, moving around with pots full of fruit on their heads or firewood in their arms. As if hurrying to get all their stocks into safety in these last days of October before the hard months of the dry season.

Some three million of the inhabitants are
dependent on cotton

We were on our way to the cotton growing area of Benin, a zone in the north of this narrow country, which is geographically described as "dry savanna" because of its predominantly dry climate. The change between dry and rainy seasons with high temperatures is favourable for cotton growing, which has been practised for millennia in Asia, South America and a narrow strip to the north and south of the Sahara. Some sources claim that cotton was cultivated in Egypt as much as 12,000 years ago. It is known for certain that cotton was called "white gold" in ancient Babylon because of its enormous value. And cotton is likewise one of the essential products for Benin - some three million of the eight million inhabitants of the country are in one way or another dependent on production, further processing or trading of cotton.

The cotton zone is about nine hours’ drive from the coast. Our driver steps on the gas, but he has to be careful not to run over the manioc and yam roots that the farmers have spread out by the roadside to dry on the asphalt. They were all clearly busy with their preparations for the next five months, the lean period of the year. "Just look at that!" said Younoussa Imorou, our guide from GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit) pointing to the roadside ditch at the wreck of what must once have been a truck. "In Benin road accidents cause more deaths than AIDS."

Gradually the trees are getting smaller and plantations rarer. The red-brown earth already has deep cracks, even before the start of the dry season. But that alone is not enough to explain why the soil supports only desperately poor plant growth in many places. Massion Akambi, Head of Department at the Ministry of Agriculture of Benin and responsible for cotton growing, gave us an extensive lecture the previous day on growing methods and the benefits of organic farming. "We made many mistakes in the past few years," he admitted, "using too much pesticide and insecticide, and causing great damage to the soil. And excessive use of fertilizers led to leaching of the soil." Mr. Akambi, a well-built man with strong shoulders and arms was full of praise for the "Cotton-made-in-Africa" initiative, called simply "Cemia" in French, and said this was the right way forward.

It uses less fertilizer, less pesticide, gives greater crop yield and ultimately gives farmers more income - the promise of "Cotton-made-in-Africa" sounds like a fairy tale. There are no more signposts showing the way to Pehunco, our destination, and the last fifty kilometres on the country road, washed out by rainfall, are an uncomfortable reminder of the benefits of asphalt. The distances between the villages, groups of round mud huts, are getting ever greater, and we start to see the first cotton bolls in the little fields beyond the road, hanging like snowballs from the bushes.

Historically, farmers have scraped by on meager earnings

We would have liked to spend the night in one of the villages. But we were advised not to by the GTZ, which has been training the farmers in this region for many years. In many of the villages, the elders of the tribe feel bound by custom to send a woman to share the night with every male guest in their huts. We arrive at dusk, and our host Henri Agbozognigbe is waiting expectantly for us at the entrance gate of a factory site that has appeared out of the blue. The small, round, brick huts for guests are a part of his domain, just as the huge warehouses and the production facility. "Welcome to CDGA, one of Benin’s biggest cotton gins," he says in a friendly voice. Henri Agbozognigbe is the "Chef de l’usine", the factory manager. We ask him who it belongs to. He stares at us as if we had asked who owns the nose on his face. "Monsieur Talon" he says.

Anyone who has anything to do with cotton in Benin will come across the name Talon. Pierre Talon, the founder of the company, saw developments coming many years ago and set up on his own account as a trader at a time when the cotton sector in West Africa was still firmly in the hands of the government, and was gradually being stifled by bureaucracy. Today, the trade is largely liberalised, and the process of privatisation has also reached the cotton gins and the few further processing textile factories. Talon is one of the partners of "Cotton-made-in-Africa", alongside the world’s largest cotton traders Dunavant and Reinhart.

It is not until the next morning that we feel we have really arrived in the "cotton fields back home". The nearest village to the cotton gin generates a captivating atmosphere of calm, with bare-breasted women carrying their pitchers of water to the village square, where there is a fire burning. There are two old men sitting in the shade under a straw roof, weaving thick yarn into strips of material on antiquated looms. Regardless of poverty, there is a sense of contentment which is not just the product of romantic imagination. All the more reason for anger on hearing just how little the farmers get paid for their work. Take Gera Sinagura, a cotton farmer here. Last year he received 175 CFA (African Francs) per kilogramme, that is about 25 cents. Out of that money he has to pay for fertilizer, pesticides and tools. In the end, he is left with just 3 cents per kilogramme of cotton. By the time one kilogramme of these light fibres has been harvested, he and his family have put many hours of work into it.

Things are improving

Two villages further on, in Sayakrou, the cotton farmers of the local "Cotton-made-in-Africa" cooperative have gathered under a tree in the village square to organise harvesting. Twelve farmers and five farmers’ wives are sitting in a circle on plain wooden benches, and the eldest of them starts his speech. "As you know, we will not get any more for cotton this year than we did last year. In the past we had lower costs, and our prices were higher." It is the same lament as the black slaves had in the cotton fields of the Southern States of the USA 150 years ago. The lament is different, but equally justified. Only that there are different words to describe the slavery and exploitation in Sayakrou. The people here have no electricity, no radio and no newspapers. And yet every one of the villagers knows why they are so badly off. It is because the governments of the rich countries in Europe, and above all in the USA, subsidise their cotton growers with billions of dollars and euros. That is why the price has gone down in the world market. And that is why the families in Sayakrou have so little money.

In fact most of them had decided to give up cotton growing and take up cultivation of manioc, maize or soy. That does not earn money either, but at least they can eat the products or sell them for a few francs at the nearest market. Then, two years ago, along came agricultural advisers such as Issaka Essotina to the villages, and told them about the "Cotton-made-in-Africa" programme. They promised cheaper pesticides, training in organic farming, and above all timely payment after the harvest.

And did it help? Farmer Seke Saré pauses for a moment to think, then he points to the village huts, almost all of which have corrugated iron roofs. "You just have to look at the roofs to see whether the farmers in a village work with the new method or the old one. We have corrugated iron, while the others just have straw. The price we get for cotton is still far too low, but at least we do get payment." Then the 35-year-old father of five continues in "Bariba", the local language: "But the best thing is that our children no longer have to work in the fields - they can now go to school."

They founded their own school

One of the goals of the "Cotton-made-in-Africa" project is to combat child labour in the countries involved in the programme, that is Benin, Zambia and Burkina Faso. There is compulsory schooling in Benin, but only a little more than 60% of all children can in fact go to school. Many of them have to help their parents or relatives with the field work. Farmers from "Cotton-made-in-Africa" have undertaken to send their children to school and only to take them to the fields outside of school hours.

There is a very special school in the village of Dekerou. It is no bigger or better than the other schools, with its mud walls and its two classrooms, and the noise of children shouting and laughing after the end of lessons is the same as in all the other schools in the area. The special thing about this school is not visible, but teacher Marcellin Akpo explains it to us - "Until two years ago, there was no school here. The very few children who went to school at all had to walk to the next village, several kilometres away, come heat or rain." The farmers waited in vain for help from the government. So they started their own school for the children, building the schoolhouse with their own hands and hiring two teachers, and paying for them out of their own pockets. "Today, every child in Dekerou goes to school," said teacher Akpo, and to prove it he gets the whole class to count to twenty in French. 55 voices chant in unison "Un, deux, trois ..."

The next morning, the government agricultural advisers for the district arrive from the provincial capital Kouandé to discuss problems related to the project. As in the villages, they sit in a circle in the shade of a big tree, and give their reports one after the other. Here there is a shortage of trucks to transport the cotton after harvesting; there the buyer broke his promise and failed to pay on time. At another place, the promised pesticides never arrived; and elsewhere farmers, frustrated by the low prices in the previous year, decided to grow something else instead of cotton. Younoussa Imorou, our guide and contact at GTZ, writes down the complaints. "We are still at the beginning, my friends", he says. "But an incredible amount has happened in this short period. Government, private traders, aid organisations and cotton farmers all have the same objective - to improve the quality of cotton made in Africa." Everybody claps. Then our driver sounds his horn. We still have another nine hours’ drive back to Cotonou.

Text: Philipp Mausshardt, Zeitenspiegel
Photo: Paul Hahn, laif