The Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford published in August 2012 a study titled "The Rise and Fall of (Chinese) African Apparel Exports." Written by Lorenzo Rotunno, Pierre-Louis Vezina and Zheng Wang, it explained that during the final years of the Multifiber Agreement the United States imposed strict import quotas on Chinese apparel while it gave African apparel duty- and quota-free access. The combination of these policies led to a rapid but ephemeral rise of African exports.
The authors concluded that the success by African textile exports was due to a temporary transshipment of Chinese apparel driven by quota-hopping Chinese assembly firms. Direct transhipment accounted for about half of the apparel exports to the United States under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
Click here to read the study.