‘Regional power bloc could take on China’

AGAINST A backdrop of global concern over China’s emerging dominance in the apparel-sourcing market, president of the Clothing Trade Council of South Africa, Jack Kipling, has called for a regional power bloc to become an ‘alternative China’. “It is unlikely that any one sub-Saharan country, on its own, could achieve the necessary critical mass or variety to attract the global market of tomorrow. To have any chance of success countries are going to have to look beyond themselves and look to a regional power bloc,” he told FTW. “Sub-saharan Africa, as a collective whole, should set itself the goal of becoming another ‘China’, an alternative to China. This will, of course, require a high level of co-operation between the clothing and textile industries of the region, and the marketing of the region as a collective whole. It will also require that every country, every company, sets itself the goal of being a zone of excellence for apparel and contributes in full to developing a positive international reputation for the region as a whole.”