African cotton producers said on Sunday they planned to hand the World Trade Organisation a petition which calls for an end to cotton subsidies in rich nations and has been signed by two million people.
The Association of African Cotton Producers (APROCA) said it planned to deliver the petition to WTO members at a key meeting in Hong Kong this month and said that such subsidies threatened millions of lives on the world's poorest continent.
"The unfair cotton subsidies threaten the lives of 10 to 15 million African farmers and their families as well as the economies of the region," APROCA said in a statement at an Africa-France summit in Mali's capital Bamako.
"Africa lost more than $400 million between 2001 and 2003 because of the dumping of subsidised cotton," it said.
Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali - West African states whose economies depend on cotton - have said rich nations must halt export subsidies by the end of 2005 and drop 80 percent of other trade-distorting cotton subsidies by a year later.
The European Union has proposed that nations should agree to eliminate export subsidies the moment a broader new treaty on trade, currently under negotiation, goes into effect.
French President Jacques Chirac, in Bamako for the summit with heads of state from around Africa, on Saturday called on the United States to end subsidies to allow African growers the chance to compete fairly on the international market.
But the United States, the world's largest cotton exporter and the biggest subsidiser, has said rich nations can best respond to African producers' concerns by agreeing on a global deal to open up agricultural markets and cut farm supports.