In its endeavour to build long-term development partnership with African nations, especially in cotton, India has announced the launch of the second phase of cotton Technical Assistance Programme (TAP) for 5 African countries.
This was announced by the Union Minister of Textiles, Smriti Irani today at the partners Conference in Geneva.
The minister was speaking at the World Cotton Day programme.
In the 5-year-long second phase, TAP will be introduced for Mali, Ghana, Togo, Zambia and Tanzania.
Notably, India had implemented a TAP for cotton in 6 African countries, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda from 2012 to 2018.
Smriti Irani said that India is also engaging meaningfully in providing assistance to strengthen both the agriculture and textile parts of the cotton value chain in Africa.
And how it plans to get this done!
There will be training and capacity-building programmes for farmers, scientists, Government officials and industry representatives in addition to creating cotton-related infrastructure, added Smriti Irani.
She also said that it is fitting that Mahatma Gandhi has been chosen as the icon for the World Cotton Day and to mark the celebration of the first World Cotton Day, India will gift a replica of Mahatma Gandhi’s Charkha to the WTO.
Smriti Irani was hopeful that the World Cotton Day will help showcase innovative initiatives in the cotton eco-system and channel more development assistance for cotton. She said World Cotton Day was an opportunity to recognise significance of cotton as a global commodity.
Source: https://in.apparelresources.com