Using a series of market structure criteria, this paper gives a panorama of policies and reforms in all sub-saharan African cotton producing countries from the early 1960s to the present time. Reporting institutional changes precisely and in a consistent manner for all countries offers new opportunities for empirical comparative work. In addition, we identify trends in policy changes, which, to our knowledge, have not yet been described; in particular, we observe a recent but clear tendency towards re-regulation, which, interestingly, seems to transcend the traditional geographical divide.