Subsidies and Regulatory Reform in West African Cotton: What are the Development Stakes?

While most West African countries have already taken important steps in that direction, much work still remains to be done, in particular in Mali. The necessary path of reform is highly complex and country-specific, but we can suggest some overarching goals:

• Assuring closer alignment between world and domestic (producer) prices;
• Improving cotton sector productivity by reinforcing market infrastructure at crucial points in the supply chain, and ensuring openness to technological advances including biotechnology;
• Investing in physical and informational infrastructure so as to bring farmers closer to markets.