Loss of textile market costs African jobs

All across Africa, textile producers and exporters are reeling from the impact of new trade rules that took effect in January 2005. The rules, negotiated at the World Trade Organization (WTO), opened up to market forces a sector that had been protected for more than 30 years. It did so by ending a quota system in industrial nations which as a side effect had provided a ready market for textiles and apparel from poor African and other developing countries.