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Abstract
Since the mid-1990s, China has become the leading exporter worldwide of manufactured textiles and clothing. For Nigeria, one of China’s major trading partners in Africa, increased imports of Chinese textiles are related to the decline of the Nigerian textile manufacturing industry. It also reflects the opening up of China to foreign investment and the subsequent boom in manufactured textile exports and to changes in World Trade Organization textile agreements. This paper examines these changes in textile manufacture and trade, focusing first on twentieth-century Chinese and Nigerian textile manufacturing histories and their subsequent divergence, beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the early twenty-first century. The increase in Chinese-Nigerian textile trade became physically evident in Nigeria in the late 1990s, with Chinese textile companies setting up offices in Lagos and Kano, and Nigerian traders and businessmen setting up offices in Guangzhou, China. The question of how increased shipments of Chinese manufactured textiles have been organized by Chinese company representatives, brokers, and traders, as well as by Nigerian traders and businessmen to meet Nigerian consumer demand is then addressed. Finally, this growth in textile trade is considered in the context of Chinese-Nigerian plans for the building of a Free Trade Zone in Lagos, which would include the construction of a new textile mill. The paper concludes by considering whether this collaboration may lead to a revival of the Nigerian textile industry.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Salihu Maiwada and Dakyes Usman, Ahmadu Bello University-Zaria; Hannatu Hassan and Abdulkarim Dan-Asabe, Federal College of Education, Kano; Heidi Haugen, University of Oslo; Allen Hai Xiao, University of Wisconsin; and Qiuyu Jiang, McGill University for their advice concerning this project. Special thanks go to the Nigerian and Chinese textile traders—in Kano, Nigeria, and Guangzhou, China—for their co-operation and helpful interviews and to Bernard Laverty, David Whitehead & Sons and to the staffs of the Ministry of Information, Kaduna, and the Cleveland Museum of Art for photograph permission. Thanks are also due to Shafiu Yalwan Danziyal, Musa Bala, and Hassana Yusuf for their assistance.
Funding
Research funding for this work was received from the Pasold Fund as well as the African Studies Center and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.
Notes
1. China was more directly affected by Western intervention, exemplified by the Tientsin Treaty of 1858, which “gave Western merchants in China the right to travel outside the treaty ports for business reasons.” In addition, the Japanese tariff revision of 1866 provided very low tariff rates for both export and import duties (Sugiyama Citation1988: 281). Such direct intervention in the northern Nigerian textile trade did not occur until after 1903 when British colonial rule was established in the Northern Nigerian Protectorate. However, documents indicate that trans-Saharan trade brought European textiles to Kano by 1880 and European industrially-spun thread earlier in the century (Johnson Citation1976: 100).
2. According to Taylor (Citation2007: 631), “China’s first scheduled direct flight to Africa was inaugurated on 31 December 2006, with China Southern Airlines Company (CSAC) launching its maiden flight from Beijing to Lagos via Dubai.”
3. The CHA Group, under Cha Chi Ming, subsequently established textile factories in Lagos (1971) and Funtua (1978) in Nigeria as well as in Accra, Ghana (Akosombo Textiles, Ltd).
4. According to Cochran (Citation2000: 95), Japanese textile companies had legal rights to establish factories in China after 1895 as part of the treaty agreements after the Sino-Japanese War (1894‒1895) but “had cautiously refrained from making direct investments in China.”
5. The CHA Group factory, originally based in Shanghai, was one of the textile manufacturers operating during the postwar period, although following the collapse of the Republic of China and the creation of the People’s Republic of China, the CHA Group operations relocated to Hong Kong where it established the China Dyeing Works Ltd textile mill in 1949 (CHA Group website http://www.chatextiles.com/english/index.html). In the mid-1990s, CHA Group returned to build textile mills in mainland China (CHA website).
6. This area of Guangzhou has received considerable attention from journalists (Porzucki Citation2012) and academics (see Bodomo Citation2012; Haugen Citation2012; Lyons, Brown and Li Citation2008, Citation2012).
7. Sylvanus (Citation2013: 71) discusses this practice by younger Togolese women traders, known as Nanettes, who travel to China to make custom orders for wax print cloths.
8. This man mentioned two long-standing Nigerian cloth traders whom he had worked with before the Kaduna textile industry closed down. It is also possible that he obtained inexpensive textiles from Nigerian company workers who received cloth overruns as a bonus for good work or at a much reduced price during holidays such as Christmas and Sallah (Eid-el-Fitr and Eid-el-Kabir; Interview, July 14, 2012, Zaria).
9. The National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) is sometimes wryly referred to as “No electric power always.”
10. Dangote’s great-grandfather, Alhaji Alhassan Dan Tata, was one of the businessmen who helped to establish the first textile mill in Kano.
11. Alhaji Shazali Umar, Managing Director of Minsource Ltd, an indigenous company, is handling the multi-billion naira Kano China Town project; he announced plans to commence work on the project in 2015 (Giginyu Citation2014). It is not clear at this stage who would be involved in such a project and whether it would receive Kano State and Chinese funding, although Alhaji Umar mentioned that private investors were involved.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Elisha P. Renne
Elisha P. Renne is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan. Her writing on African textiles includes the book, Cloth That Does Not Die (1995), and the edited volumes, Yoruba Religious Textiles (2005) and Veiling in Africa (2013). [email protected]