The Sikasso region of Mali, in the Sahel, is the country’s most fertile and most rain-rich. Due
to this, the region thrives in terms of agricultural production and its food surpluses are
distributed throughout the country. But above all, this region is the region in which Mali’s
chief agro-industrial resource is produced, so-called ‘white gold’. For decades, the cottonproducing
zone has received the support of both the country’s public authorities and its
international donors, who have constructed a public vertically integrated sector. Along with
the rice-producing area of the Office du Niger, the cotton zone unquestionably channels the
largest part of the country’s agricultural development efforts.
However, national and international statistics have reported several times over a period of a
dozen or so years that this region of Sikasso is the country’s poorest rural region and that
cotton producers are on average poorer than all other farmers in the country.
Such is the discrepancy highlighted by this information between existing potential and
resources invested, on one hand, and results in fighting poverty on the other, that this
information could appear astounding.
Notwithstanding this the data produced on this unexplained poverty – sometimes referred to
as the Sikasso paradox – has been put to use far more than it has been questioned. Thus it is
used to support denouncements of Malian farmers’ dependence on fluctuating world prices,
and also of the inequality engendered by industry subsidies in Western countries. Equally, the
data has bolstered arguments for radical reform of the industry by underlining the poor results
that the current system obtains. While these uses might be considered opportunistic, beyond
them it is clear that this data deserves greater attention.