U.S.-grown cotton could be taking a longer route back to American closets.

The United States-Africa Trade Desk and governments from Mauritius, Lesotho and Kenya have announced the Trans-Atlantic Cotton Partnership, an initiative intended to connect American cotton suppliers with African textile and apparel manufacturers producing for the U.S. market.

Announced Sept. 23 during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the partnership aims to establish a sourcing route that links U.S. farms, African factories and American retailers. The U.S.-Africa Trade Desk, a private company that facilitates trade between the United States and African countries, said it would support the effort through logistics, financing and compliance services.

“Through this partnership, we have an opportunity to build something much larger than the cotton trading arrangement,” Lesotho Prime Minister Sam Matekane said in his keynote address. “We have an opportunity to connect two continents through a productive industrial relationship.”

Under the proposed model, cotton would ship directly from the U.S. to Africa for processing into products such as jeans and T-shirts before returning to the U.S. as finished goods. The trade desk said the arrangement would allow consumers to identify both the American farm that supplied the cotton and the African plant that manufactured the garment.

The trade desk said the partnership would lower prices for American shoppers, though it did not say by how much.

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