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The Changing Contexts

of Chinese-Nigerian
Textile Production and
Trade, 19002015

Abstract

S
Downloaded by [58.153.40.245] at 09:37 01 February 2016

ince the mid-1990s, China

has become the leading
exporter worldwide of
manufactured textiles and
clothing. For Nigeria, one of
Chinas 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.

Keywords:textile manufacturing; Chinese-Nigerian textile trade; Kano;

Nigeria; Guangzhou; China; textile agreements; special economic zones

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). erenne@umich.edu

Textile, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp. 212233

DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2015.1054105
Reprints available directly from the Publishers.
Photocopying permitted by licence only.
2016 Taylor & Francis
Printed in the United Kingdom