The African IFFAC Fund (Impact Fund for African Creatives), which specializes in the financial support and development of the African creative and cultural industries, has presented plans to revolutionize the West African textile, textile products and clothing industry. The focus is on processing local cotton and using textile waste from industrialized countries, which has become a real environmental problem in countries like Ghana.
The fund aims to transform an underutilized textile mill in the region into a high-tech center for processing local cotton and recycling scrap fabric. Sustainability is the focus of this project. Founder and Managing Partner of IFFAC, Roberta Annan, Head of Annan Capital Partners and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme, is the driving force behind the project. Annan: “The fashion industry is as environmentally destructive as shipping and aviation combined and this is a situation that cannot be allowed to continue. For far too long, my fellow Ghanaians have watched the mountains of unwanted clothing from Europe and America grow immeasurably. This project is a way to turn all that waste into something useful while creating good jobs in sustainable communities. My dream would be that such a facility would be built in every country on the continent. We have the skills and the will to do it. Now we have the opportunity to do that.”
About six percent of the world’s cotton is currently grown in West Africa. However, only two percent of the cotton grown in the region is processed into textiles and textile products locally, the rest is shipped to other countries, with over 90 percent going to Asia for further processing. As a result of this unsustainable practice, the cotton-rich countries of West Africa are importing textiles at an estimated value more than three times the value they obtain from exporting their cotton. As well as producing fabrics from sustainably grown new cotton – a joint venture with a private Asian spinning and weaving mill that has long served the African market – the factory will also house a state-of-the-art shredding and recycling facility, a joint venture between IFFAC and the Netherlands Circularity BV Currently, fifteen million pieces of clothing from developed countries are thrown away in Ghana every week, most of which is unusable, with significant environmental costs.
The new facility is estimated to be capable of producing six million finished garments and twenty-five million meters of spun and woven fabrics per year.
A total of $30 million will be invested in the site, which is expected to be operational next year (2023).