DAR ES SALAAM, March 23 -- FOR decades, Tanzania has been a giant asleep at the wheel of its own resource wealth.

As Africas second-largest cotton producer, the nation has efficiently mastered the art of exporting raw potential, shipping “white gold” in its most basic form to foreign mills.

By exporting raw lint, we have been exporting Tanzanian jobs and subsidizing the industrial growth of other nations.

We have been missing out on the massive value-added margins of spinning, weaving and garment making, leaving our economy vulnerable to the volatile price swings of global commodities while importing expensive finished clothes made from our very own crops.

However, the tide is turning. The governments “Cotton-to-Clot...