Togo - Industry

Manufacturing represents a small part of the economy (6–8%), with textiles and the processing of agricultural products—palm oil extraction, coffee roasting, and cotton ginning and weaving—being the most important sectors. Other industries were developed to provide consumer goods—footwear, beverages, confectionery, salt, and tires. Phosphate mining, however, is the most important industrial activity, accounting for 5% of GDP and 26–28% of exports in 2002. Until the mid-1980s, most industries were partly or totally government owned. Sales and leases reduced the parastatal sector by nearly half by 1990, but by 2002 most privatization had been stalled.

The government-owned phosphates plant put out a maximum of 3.3 to 3.5 metric tons a year, at the Office Togolaise de Phosphates (OTP). Togo's cement clinker plant is operated and owned by a Norwegian company, renamed Cimtogo. The textile complex at Kara, along with a second plant at Dadja, were bought by American and Korean interests in 1987. A cotton ginning plant opened in 1991 in Talo. A plastics factory is 25% state owned and 75% owned by Danish and Swiss interests. The steel rolling mill in Lomé reopened in 1991. The state-owned national oil refinery was leased to Shell Togo and converted into a storage facility. The national dairy was bought by a Danish company in 1995. A free-trade zone opened in Lomé in 1990. Though there is interest in this program, recent political instability has slowed its development.

Togo is involved in the West Africa Gas Pipeline, due to be completed in 2003. The pipeline's estimated capacity is 400 million cubic feet per day, and is expected to supply industry in Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, and Togo.