CmiA now also active in Cameroon

14.07.2014

Cotton initiative supports an additional 1.5 million people in Africa

After successfully completing verification, more than 226,000 smallholder farmers in Cameroon are for the first time growing cotton according to the CmiA standard and are now part of the CmiA initiative. Including the family members of the smallholder farmers, this means that over 1.5 million people will now benefit from the program. Cotton made in Africa has thus been able to further expand its cooperation with smallholder farmer families in Sub-Saharan Africa to round about 660,000 and currently helps over 4.8 million people.

The most important pillar of the Cameroonian economy is agriculture which lies almost entirely in the hands of smallholder farmers. Cotton is traditionally considered one of the main sources of income with which the families in the rural regions of the country earn their livelihood. However, they haven’t been able to fully tap the potential of cotton growing to improve their living conditions until now. This is an issue CmiA is dedicated to. By joining the CmiA system, families in Cameroonian families can now also benefit from the income from license fees which are used to pay for CmiA cotton and are reinvested in the project regions. Training programs on modern, efficient, and sustainable cultivation methods assist them, for example, in improving the quality of their cotton, yield higher crops, and thus earn a better income. CmiA works together with the cotton company Sodecoton at the local level. 

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