India ITME Society has announced ITME Africa 2020, a unique and exclusive business event with the theme “Prosperity for AFRICA through Textile Technology”. Set to initiate a revolution in generating employment, encouraging skill development, motivating entrepreneurship in textiles, ushering investment, economic growth and thus bringing new aspirations for the younger generation of African countries, the first edition of ITME Africa will be held at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during February 14 to 16, 2020.
Despite an enormous untapped potential for trade expansion between India and Africa, India’s trade with Africa is concentrated in certain sectors and countries and is dominated by exports of primary commodities. While the potential for export diversification exists, it may not be realized without targeted intervention.
India is today the second largest textile industry globally and has a strong base in textile engineering. Thus it is well-positioned as a partner to improve the productive and export capacities of Africa. With the growing importance of South-South co-operation, India’s expertise can be leveraged to build the textile industry in Africa through sharing of knowledge, technology and lessons learnt.
In this context, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s Department for International Development (DFID) mandated the International Trade Centre (ITC) to design and implement a project called ‘Supporting India’s Trade Preferences for Africa’ (SITA) with the specific objective of increasing the value of business transactions between India and selected African countries with the ultimate objective of creating jobs and income opportunities. This initiative would benefit East African businesses exporting to India, Indian companies importing from, or investing in Africa and national trade and investment support institutions (TISIs). The give and take involves India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and the United Republic of Tanzania.
In a first of its kind joint venture, the India ITME Society and the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association (ECCSA) along with the International Trade Center, bring this unique and exclusive business facilitate opening up of an entire continent of new opportunities.
Thus ITME Africa 2020 is supported by the Indian Ministry of Textiles, Federal Republic of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Textile Development Institute and the International Trade Centre as Trade & Investment partner.
History shows that textiles is one of the prime gateways for industrial development, as it played the major role in the industrial revolution of countries like India. Ethiopia being home to the African union has the potential to be the gateway to bring prosperity to the region through textile and textile engineering products. This business exhibition shall showcase the complete range of textile and textile engineering with a total of 27 chapters. Four broad categories are covered – Textiles, Textile Technology, Textile Engineering, Financial Institutions and allied segment.
With over 80 years of development and a fastest growing economy in the African continent, Ethiopia is showing potential to become the region’s textile and apparel hub.