23. CSR Project: Cotton Made in Africa

In search for the “missing link” in the ongoing debate on implementing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development (SD), the following research examines the German development initiative. Cotton made in Africa (CmiA), an initiative with a novel and widespread impact on business solutions which, among other goals, aims at reducing poverty in developing countries. CmiA successfully improves the living conditions of poor small-scale African cotton farmers and provides fair-traded cotton clothing to the ordinary consumer on the world market. This chapter investigates whether the fresh approach to and the implementation of CSR as part and parcel of SD by CmiA can be an example for the highly competitive world of global business by looking at its successes as well as its limitations.

Focusing on the three key components of the missing link, this chapter investigates (1) How ownership and responsibility relate to each other, (2) How the monetary transaction value influences CSR, and (3) How transparent CSR can be managed to keep the stakeholders connected and involved inside and outside CmiA.

The main research question is concerned with CmiA’s potential of dissolving the vacuum created by the disconnection between our economic and social systems. To be more precise: Does CmiA have the potential to combine international cotton companies’ economic interest with their major social responsibility to improve the lives of millions of their cotton producers—millions of destitute small-scale farmers in Africa—in order to connect our economic and social systems in a new, far more transparent manner?

The chapter is necessarily limited by two factors: (a) The initiative CmiA is fairly recent, and (b) available facts and figures are not yet extensive enough to give complete answers to all the questions raised above and especially below. Therefore, the data collection had to rely on CmiA’s annual report 2012 and fact sheets for the period 2010/2013. Official statements and figures from relevant websites and additional interviews with Tina Stridde (Managing Director Aid by Trade Foundation), Maren Sartory (Online Communication and Public Relations TransFair), and Nathalie Bordère (Product Manager Gerhard Rösch GmbH) are included in the data collection.

The chapter concludes that CmiA presents a successful example of responsibly connecting all stakeholders for sustainable growth such as governments, the private sector, non-profit organisations and people at the grass-roots level, collectively working together with the long-term goal of successfully facilitating economic, ecological, and social sustainability.