African textiles under siege

Formerly state-owned, Sonitextil was repurchased in 1997 by China World Best, a Chinese company which now holds 80% of the shares, and renamed Enitex.

Its privatisation, a result of pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, had enabled Enitex to upgrade and renovate its plant.

But from 2004, it started to show "the first signs of suffocation in the face of competition" according to Aboul Nasser Seydou, a textile industry trade unionist and department head at Enitex.

The situation worsened at the start of 2005 with an invasion of local markets by Asian textiles that were often smuggled across the southern border with Nigeria, he said.

Consequently, Enitex sales plummeted from 4.4bn CFA franc ($8.5m) in 2002 to 2.3bn in 2005.

Over the same period, production was cut in half according to the ministry of commerce, and it ceased exporting.

In April, about 700 Enitex employees sounded an alarm, saying the company risked bankruptcy owing to a "lack of protectionist policy" vis-a-vis the dangers posed by Asian imports.

"The company is caught up in the storm of a global textile crisis, particularly with the concurrence of very competitive Chinese products," said Boubacar Gourouzane, assistant general manager of Enitex.

Two weeks ago however, the Niger government blamed high production costs for Enitex's woes.

In hopes of keeping the company afloat, its management worked out a restructuring plan and began to implement it in June by laying off around 500 of the company's 700 employees.

Meanwhile, the government announced last week a series of measures, one of which was designed to counter low-cost textile imports by hiking the customs tariffs for all Asian textiles.

But observers question the effectiveness of such a move given the high levels of illegal imports along the porous 1 000km border that Niger shares with Nigeria.

For most of Niger's poverty-stricken population, the Asian textiles trade was a windfall.

"On the markets, there are fabrics which are certainly of much inferior quality (than those from Enitex) but which are almost two times less expensive, and that suits us," textile customer Nana Fatouma said.

According to her, a three-length piece of Enitex traditional loincloth cost 4.500 CFA, compared with 2.500 CFA or 3.500 CFA for imported fabrics from China or Taiwan, respectively.

In despair, the government has launched a media campaign encouraging the use of Enitex loincloths for popular ceremonies such as marriages.