Africa’s textile sector has a long history of industrial policy intervention. Governments have used tariffs, import restrictions, subsidies, tax incentives, local-content requirements, and other instruments to protect domestic manufacturers and encourage industrial development. Such measures can have legitimate roles, particularly where governments are attempting to overcome coordination failures or provide temporary support to emerging industries.

But protection is not the same as competitiveness. An industry can survive behind protective barriers without developing the productivity, technology, quality, scale or export capabilities required to compete internationally. This distinction is particularly important as African governments revisit industrial policy.

The World Bank’s 2026 Africa Economic Update, focused specifically on making industrial policy work in Africa, argues for a more pragmatic, ecosystem-based approach that aligns policy instruments with country capabilities and focuses on productivity gains and durable structural transformation. It also notes that previous industrial policy efforts often struggled because of weak implementation capacity, institutional constraints, and limited fiscal space.

A competitiveness-oriented textile industrial strategy would prioritize productivity improvement, machinery modernization, workforce development, industrial infrastructure, quality standards, technology adoption, access to finance, sustainability compliance, export development, and supplier ecosystem creation. It would also establish clearer expectations for public support, with incentives clearly connected to measurable outcomes such as:

• productivity improvements;
• export performance;
• domestic and regional sourcing;
• employment and skills development;
• technology upgrading;
• environmental performance;
• supplier development; and
• investment commitments.

This approach reduces the risk of creating permanently protected industries and instead makes public support part of a pathway toward commercial competitiveness. It also helps to measure industrial growth not only by how much is produced, but by whether production becomes more productive, more sophisticated, more integrated and more internationally competitive.

This is particularly relevant for textiles because global competition is intense. African producers are not competing only against low labour costs elsewhere but also against ecosystems that combine scale, technology, infrastructure, supplier density, logistics efficiency, specialized skills and mature buyer relationships. Tariff protection cannot compensate indefinitely for disadvantages across these dimensions. Industrial policy therefore needs to become more selective and more disciplined. Rather than attempting to preserve every existing manufacturer, governments should focus on building the ecosystem conditions under which productive firms can scale, and uncompetitive production can be upgraded or repositioned.

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