Could T-shirts be the way to industrialise an African nation?

A plain cotton T-shirt is a pretty ordinary item of clothing. But for Benin, a sliver of a country on the west coast of Africa with little manufacturing tradition, it is intended to be the start of an industrial revolution.

“We call it farm to fashion,” says Ramakrishnan Janarthanan, chief development officer at Arise Integrated Industrial Platforms, a Dubai-based industrial group that is investing €550mn in textiles and apparel alongside Benin’s sovereign wealth fund and a consortium of local cotton-ginning companies.