Mark Bennett

Textile and Apparel Value Chain Specialist

Mark Bennett is the USAID Southern Africa Trade Hub's Textile and Apparel Value Chain Specialist. At SATH he will be working with regional textile and apparel producers to help them sell more product in the SADC region and in other global markets. Mark will also hel firms in the region to become more competitive.

Mark is an industrial, trade and labor market practitioner with 22 years of experience in Southern and Eastern Africa's cotton, textile and apparel industries.

For more than 15 years he worked to develop South Africa's textile, apparel and leather value chain. He has long term in-country work experience in Lesotho (the biggest exporter of apparel to the US in terms of AGOA) where for four years he was the program manager of the ComMark Lesotho Apparel Project; he also spent two years as the head of the Tanzania Cotton Board's (TCB) Textile Sector Development Unit.

Mark has played an important role in facilitating textile and apparel value chain investments in South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Tanzania. As SATH's cotton, textile & apparel specialist he will focus on generating more intra-regional value chain trade. He believes that there is significant opportunity for regional manufacturers to trade even more product among themselves; for regional producers to sell additional volumes to regional 'high street' retailers; and for manufacturers to sell product to African mining/manufacturing companies and hospitality establishments.