This paper investigates the trade and employment consequences for Africa of the expiry on 1 January 2005 of the Multi-Fibre
Arrangement (MFA) and its successor, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC). Using panel data on textile-and-clothing
(T&C) exports from 1990-2016 together with newly-compiled firm-level employment surveys from nine African economies, we find
that the removal of quantitative restrictions was followed by a 14 % contraction in African T&C export values to the EU and a 9 % fall
to the United States, even as world T&C trade expanded by 30 %. Decomposition analysis shows that three-quarters of the decline is
attributable to the displacement of African products by lower-priced Chinese and Indian goods, while the remainder reflects eroding
preferences under AGOA and tightening rules-of-origin. Employment effects are heterogeneous. Lesotho, Kenya and
Mauritius—where T&C accounted for up to 80 % of manufacturing jobs—lost an estimated 105 000 positions (28 % of sector
employment) within three years, concentrated among young women in cut-make-trim operations. By contrast, Ethiopia, Madagascar
and Senegal, which upgraded into higher-unit-value niche products, experienced net job creation of 7 % despite static or falling
export volumes. A partial-equilibrium simulation suggests that every 10 % loss in T&C export share reduces female manufacturing
employment by 4.2 % and government social-security contributions by 2.9 %. Policy simulations indicate that a 5 % reduction in
African T&C tariffs on imported inputs coupled with a 10 % improvement in lead-time reliability would offset roughly half of the MFA-
related losses. The paper concludes that the end of the MFA exposed structural competitiveness gaps rather than causing them, and
that targeted industrial policies—especially logistics upgrading, input-cost mitigation and regional market diversification—are critical if
Africa is to reclaim employment and export dynamism in the post-quota era.