Cotton Made in Africa (CmiA)’s partners made significant strides last year, Aid by Trade Foundation (AbTF), the nonprofit organization responsible for the standard, revealed in a recently released report.

Aggregated verification results from 2023 found that the largest program for sustainable cotton from Africa’s verified partners achieved “good” to “very good” ratings across its four sustainability pillars. Prosperity performed preeminently, followed by people, management and planet.

More from Sourcing Journal

• Loose Threads: Ksubi, Naked & Famous and Banana Republic

• ESG Outlook: Alison Ward of CottonConnect on Delivering a More Sustainable Cotton Supply Chain

• Metallics, AI and Muted Colors Top Cotton Incorporated's Denim Forecast for 2025-2026

Highlights include conducting 23 verification missions (13 at the field level, 10 in cotton ginneries) at 20 cotton companies in 11 countries in Sub-Sahara Africa. Around 900,000 CmiA farmers worked 1.7 million hectares of land, verified under the CmiA and CmiA Organic standards, to produce about 508,000 tons of ginned cotton—the equivalent of about a billion T-shirts.

These standards were “extensively revised” in 2022 with the general structure, terminology, formulation of criteria, rating system and pesticide undergoing an “evolution,” so to speak, with updated expectations, including the introduction of the aforementioned pillars. The 2023 Aggregated Verification & Implementation Report is the second of its kind to analyze the field- and ginnery-level implementation of the CmiA standard’s fourth volume.

“Verifications ensure the credibility of our standards. The latest results clearly show that our close collaboration with local partners, some of whom we have worked with for years, is making cotton cultivation in Africa better and more attractive in the long term,” said Elena Wahrenberg, the CmiA verification manager at the AbTF. “Through our wide and varied training program, we will continue doing everything we can to build up the adaptability and resilience of small-scale farmers and their systems.”

Compared to the aggregated verification results from 2022, “significant improvements” were made across the board in all areas except the planet pillar, where there was a “slight deterioration” of 0.1 score points, per the report.

“Dignified working conditions and support for small-scale farmers were evaluated as ‘very good,’ due in part to the emphasis placed on protecting the rights and health of employees and laborers through appropriate working hours,” the Green Button-recognized organization said. “Regarding environmental aspects, CmiA cotton continues to be cultivated strictly without genetically modified seeds and without irrigation using surface water or groundwater.”