Cotton is an unquestioned success of Zambia’s turn towards a market economy. Yet the entry over the past two years of new players has put the sector under great stress and may have pushed it to a turning point. Now more than ever, effective “rules of the game” are urgently needed to protect Zambia’s remarkable cotton success story. Other countries in southern and eastern Africa have seen dramatic declines in input credit and extension to farmers, and in cotton quality, when competition among ginning firms intensified in the absence of suitable rules of the game. The focus in Zambia must be on establishing broadly accepted rules of the game that ensure honest competition that does not undermine input credit, extension, and cotton quality.