GROWER TO SEWER

When you think of edun LIVE, we want you to think of the phrase Grower to Sewer. Let us explain what we mean by this and why it is important.

By grower to sewer we mean that we want every step of the t-shirt supply chain to occur in sub-Saharan Africa. This leads to jobs, skill transfer, and trade on the ground and helps create a base for a stable and long-term apparel industry.

Steps to making a t-shirt

Have you ever thought about what it takes to make a t-shirt? It seems like such a simple article of clothing, but in fact, there are a number of steps:

The hourglass dilemma

We see the survival of the apparel supply chain in Africa as a race against time. Here is why:

The supply chain is currently structured like an hourglass. At the top of the hourglass, we have all of the beautiful cotton grown in sub-Saharan Africa. It is grown there, and might be ginned there, but often, is bought by cotton traders who export it to countries outside of Africa, such as Turkey, for processing. This means that the people in Africa do not realize any of the benefits of their valuable natural resource – cotton.

In the middle of the hourglass, we have the spinning and knitting portion of the supply chain. Because so much of the raw cotton in Africa is exported directly off the continent, capacity to spin and knit cotton into fabric in Africa is limited. Africa’s capacity to make fabric must increase to create a self-sufficient apparel industry. By making edun LIVE grower to sewer African, we ensure the development of this portion of the hourglass.

At the bottom of the hourglass, we have the factories. This is where we have all of the sewing machines, and where the t-shirts are cut and sewn. There are a lot of factories in capitals like Kampala (Uganda) and Maseru (Lesotho), and many people are employed in these factories. However, currently, many of these factories are not operating at capacity (or even close to capacity). Often, they are only located in these regions of sub-Saharan Africa to take advantage of favorable trade policies that allow companies to import duty free. The African Growth and Opportunity Act is the name of the policy in the US that allows companies to import goods from sub-Saharan Africa duty free. Currently, the policy allows fabric importation from countries outside of Africa to give Africa time to build up its fabric capacity. This policy will be reviewed in 2012 and could expire. If it expires, and if there is not adequate capacity to knit fabric in Africa, many of these factories will probably close, leading to the loss of thousands of jobs and potentially the fall of the entire apparel supply chain in Africa.

That is why grower to sewer is important and why this mission is a race against time.