In this episode, Prof Peter Lund-Thomsen from CBDS speaks to Faryal Sadiq, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Interloop Limited. Interloop is one of the world’s largest hosiery manufacturer and a producer of denim and apparel products, based in Faisalabad, Pakistan employing around 30.000 people. The company has a very active involvement in sustainability and can be considered a giant manufacturer which is part of the broader international trend where giant manufacturers from the global South develop their own broader sustainability agenda – both domestically and internationally.

Prof Lindsay Whitfield from CBDS discusses the situation of informal labor in Sri Lanka’s apparel export factories with Dr Shyamain Wickramasingha, a Visiting Fellow at CBDS and a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex Business School. Critiquing the mainstream view that working informally in apparel factories is women’s choice, Dr Wickramasingha explains why this view is too simplistic. She takes us through the origins of informal labor market, how it works and the implications for informal female workers and looks forward into how the dual formal and informal labor regimes could be changed.

In this episode, Professor Lindsay Whitfield from CBDS discusses with Professor Faizel Ismail from the University of Cape Town the opportunities and challenges with using the African Continental Free Trade Area to spur regional industrialization and regional value chains. Drawing on his personal experience as South Africa’s Chief Trade Negotiator since 1994, Professor Ismail provides insights into the history of failed attempts to create common economic markets on the continent that could catalyze industrialization and why it might be different this time around.