Tag: Governance

There is a fear that runs through African and Caribbean economic policy. It is not named. It is rarely discussed. But it explains why the textile mills closed, why the cotton is still exported raw, why the gold remains in foreign vaults, and why the African Union cannot break from the extractive systems that have strangled the continent for generations. It is the fear of the interstice.

The interstice is the gap left behind when a system withdraws, collapses or is destroyed. Not a void. Not a vacuum waiting to be filled. The West calls it a vacuum. They panic. They rush to fill it with loans, aid, trade agreements, and military bases. Their logic demands that every space be occupied, measured, controlled, by them. African metaphysics has always understood the interstice differently. The Kongo call it the hollow, the printing chamber where realities are imprinted before they emerge. The Akan know the threshold between the living and the ancestors. The Yoruba map the Odu, the space where opposing forces balance. Ubuntu accepts the distance between persons as part of relation. The Mandari name the margin that cannot be utilized.

The interstice is not empty. It is the condition for new creation, for sovereignty, for independence, for liberation.

Yet the architects of African and Caribbean development policy have been terrified of it. Arthur Lewis, the Nobel Prize-winning economist from St. Lucia, built his entire model on avoiding the interstice. His critics, the Plantation School of Lloyd Best, Norman Girvan, and George Beckford, understood that the interstice was necessary, but they could not convince the policymakers. And today, the same fear paralyses the African Union and most heads of state. They negotiate for better terms within the existing system. They do not demand a new system nor prepare for an alternative. Because they are afraid of what happens if the old system withdraws and they are excluded from what comes.

This blog post traces that fear from Lewis to the present, using the textile industry as the thread that runs through the entire story. Because cotton was the colonial crop. And the cloth tells the truth.

ARTHUR LEWIS AND THE REFUSAL OF THE INTERSTICE

Arthur Lewis was born in St. Lucia in 1915. He was the first Black professor at the London School of Economics, the first Black person to hold a full professorship at the University of Manchester, and the first Black winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He was a staunch anti-imperialist who had personally taken on the English economic establishment over the West Indies' "right to industrialise" and won. He advised Kwame Nkrumah. He shaped the economic policy of newly independent nations across Africa and the Caribbean.

Yet his model of development was designed to avoid the interstice at all costs.

Lewis's Dual Sector Model, published in his 1954 paper "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour," divides the economy into two sectors: a low-productivity subsistence sector (traditional agriculture, crafts, the informal economy) and a high-productivity capitalist sector (modern industry). The model predicts that surplus labour from the subsistence sector will move to the capitalist sector, attracted by higher wages. Industrialization will proceed. Wages will eventually rise. The economy will transform.

Crucially, Lewis saw the subsistence sector as having "unlimited supplies of labour." The marginal productivity of additional workers is zero or even negative. Removing them from farming does not reduce output. This surplus labour can be drawn into the capitalist sector without raising wages, because the subsistence sector provides a constant supply of workers desperate for any wage above survival.

The model assumes that labour will move voluntarily. Workers see higher wages in the factory. They leave the farm. They are replaced by others. The process continues until the surplus labour is exhausted. At that point, wages rise across both sectors, and the economy becomes fully developed.

Lewis did not consider all factors. He assumed that labour would move from one sector to the other without any gap. The subsistence sector would shrink. The capitalist sector would expand. There would be no space between, no pause, no uncertainty. The transfer would be smooth, continuous, and automatic.

The textile industry was central to this vision. Lewis advised Kwame Nkrumah's government in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1953, recommending that the state should "pioneer" industries and then sell them once they became viable. Cotton was the obvious starting point. It was the major cash crop. It could be spun, woven, and printed locally. Foreign capital would be invited in to build the mills. Local labour would leave the farms and enter the factories.

But Lewis did not ask what would happen if the foreign capital refused the invitation. He did not ask what would happen if the mills closed. He did not anticipate that foreign capital might prefer to extract raw materials at low cost, ship them elsewhere for processing, and capture the value-added profits in their own countries. Why would he, living during the heights of the struggle of liberation, not see how the colonisers structured the realities of the economies we lived in?

PART TWO: WHAT LEWIS OVERLOOKED

The first problem with Lewis's model is that labour does not move voluntarily when it is forced. Colonial taxation policies in German East Africa (now Tanzania) deliberately created a cash shortage. Local people could not pay their taxes. To raise cash, men left textile-producing areas to seek wage work on distant plantations. The textile industry in Ufipa began to decline in the first decade of the twentieth century, not because of competition from imported cloth, but because colonial taxation policies destabilized the local labour supply.

Lewis assumed that the subsistence sector was simply less productive. The evidence shows that colonial taxation made it impossible for people to remain in the textile industry sector. They were not attracted to higher wages. They were fleeing the tax collector.

The second problem is that Lewis assumed that once labour moved to the capitalist sector, the process would be self-sustaining. The evidence from Nigeria tells a different story. Nigeria had approximately 200 textile mills in the 1970s and 1980s, employing 600,000 workers. The mills were built with foreign machinery, foreign management, and foreign capital. Then the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was imposed in 1986. The government withdrew support, assuming farmers could produce cotton as a business without guidance. The farmers were smallholders, mostly illiterate. They could not sustain production without extension officers. Land degradation followed. Soil samples were sent to India; investors refused to invest because the land was degraded. Imported cotton seeds failed to germinate. Locally developed seeds from research institutes existed, but importers bypassed them for personal profit. The mills collapsed. Today, fewer than 20 remain.

The third problem is that Lewis assumed the labour transfer would be permanent. The evidence shows that when the mills closed, workers did not return to productive subsistence farming. They migrated to cities for informal work, or they remained unemployed. The capitalist sector did not expand. The subsistence sector did not recover. The interstice opened, but it was not a space prepared for local industry. It was a wound.

The fourth problem is that Lewis assumed that the capitalist sector would eventually absorb all surplus labour. The evidence from across Africa shows that labour has moved from agriculture directly to services, bypassing manufacturing entirely. This happened largely because trade liberalization exposed manufacturing to global competition that African industries could not withstand. Today, 90 percent of Africa's production exports are unprocessed goods. The structural transformation that Lewis predicted did not happen.

The fifth problem is that Lewis assumed that wages are determined solely by labour supply and demand. The evidence from Ethiopia and Kenya shows that national labour laws and enforcement matter more. Kenyan apparel workers earn approximately three times more than their Ethiopian counterparts, not because labour is scarcer in Kenya, but because Kenya has sector-specific statutory minimum wages and stronger enforcement. Ethiopia has no statutory private-sector minimum wage, weak enforcement capacity, and limited worker representation. Foreign-owned factories in both countries tend to pay lower wages than domestic firms. This contradicts the Lewis assumption that foreign capital automatically benefits local workers.

The sixth problem is that Lewis assumed that the international economic order was neutral. The evidence from Lesotho shows that the country's entire textile sector is dependent on US trade policy. When the US threatened a 50 percent tariff in April 2025, Lesotho's government declared a two-year state of disaster. Over 20,000 jobs were at risk. Factories announced temporary closures. The sector employs approximately 30,000 to 40,000 workers. The Lewis model assumes that once labour is absorbed into manufacturing, the process is self-sustaining. Lesotho's textile sector is dependent on US buyer orders. When those orders disappear, the jobs disappear. This is not a turning point. It is a single point of failure.

THE PLANTATION SCHOOL AND THE DEMAND FOR THE INTERSTICE

The Caribbean critics of Lewis, the Plantation School of Lloyd Best, Norman Girvan, and George Beckford, saw what Lewis refused to see. They called his strategy "Industrialization by Invitation" as a deliberate dismissal. Best famously accused Lewis of being "epistemologically an Englishman," arguing that his intellectual framework was so shaped by British classical economics that he could not conceive of a development path that did not pass through foreign capital.

The Plantation School argued that the Caribbean economy was not a "dual economy" waiting to be developed. It was a single, integrated plantation economy, a socio-economic unit that remained structurally unchanged from slavery through independence. Its purpose was not local development. It was raw extraction for external powers. The capitalist sector was not the solution. It was the problem.

For the Plantation School, the interstice was not something to be avoided. It was something to be created. They called for industrialization by intention, state-led diversification away from monoculture, land reform to break up the plantation estates, and regional economic integration to create scale. They understood that the withdrawal of foreign capital would create a gap. That gap was necessary. It was the space where local industry could grow.

Girvan articulated the central difference: "In the Lewis model, foreign capital in industry is part of the solution while in the Plantation model it is part of the problem." The Plantation School looked backward at the structural limitations of the economy, the history of extraction, monoculture, and external control. Lewis looked forward to a strategy of industrialization without fundamentally altering those structures.

George Beckford authored the classic Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World (1972). He argued that plantation economies are "high-cost export propelled satellites specializing in producing raw materials for export." The Caribbean economy was not waiting to be developed. It was actively being held back by the very structure that Lewis wanted to work within.

But the Plantation School could not overcome the fear. The policymakers listened to Lewis. They invited the foreign capital. The textile mills were built. And when the mills collapsed, the Plantation School's warnings were vindicated, but it was too late. The interstice had opened as a wound, not as a workshop.

COTTON AS COLONIAL CROP

Cotton was not a neutral material. It was not just another crop. It was the fibre that financed the transatlantic slave trade. It was the raw material that powered the Industrial Revolution in England. It was the commodity that colonizers extracted from Africa, shipped to Europe, processed into cloth, and sold back to Africans at a profit.

The focus on cotton in African textile production was not natural. It was engineered. Before Europeans arrived, Portuguese-speaking Africa used raffia, palm fiber, sisal, wild rhubarb root dyes, and other local materials. Cotton became dominant because it was exportable. Colonial regimes controlled it, channeled it into global trade, and extracted it for profit rather than local use. The knowledge of how to work with raffia, palm fiber, and sisal was not written. It was not patented. It was not passed down. And because those materials had no export value, their knowledge systems were not valued.

The Kuba people of Central Africa are renowned for a specific process that turns stiff raffia plant fiber into a soft textile. Men weave the base cloth from fine raffia fibers. Women then create intricate geometric patterns using a specialized cut-pile embroidery technique. After the pile is cut, the fibers are rubbed together, which gives the surface a silky lustre reminiscent of velvet, hence the name "velvet raffia." This was historically used as a form of currency, as ceremonial dress, and to adorn royal stools. An unprocessed raffia fiber is stiff, but after these specialized techniques, it can be as soft as cotton, with a luxurious velvet-like feel. This is not just a craft. It is a sophisticated material engineering process.

But the colonial economy had no use for raffia. It could not be exported in bulk. It could not be processed in European factories. It could not be taxed at the same rate. So raffia was ignored. Its knowledge system was not protected. And today, the knowledge to make velvet raffia is at risk of being lost.

The cotton textile industry in Africa was not designed to develop the continent. It was designed to manage the labour surplus. Lewis's model, with its "unlimited supplies of labour" moving voluntarily from subsistence to industry, provided an economic justification for this structure. He assumed labour would move because wages were higher. He did not account for the fact that labour had to be forced, taxed, or coerced into wage employment. He did not account for the soil degradation that followed monocropping. He did not account for the fact that when the mills closed, the workers could not simply return to farms that had been depleted and abandoned.

The cotton was colonial. The mills were colonial. The collapse was colonial. The interstice that opened was not a space for African industry. It was a space for Asian imports and European second-hand clothing. And the leaders were afraid to demand anything different, because they feared the interstice.

THE AFRICAN AND CARIBBEAN CRITICS OF LEWIS

African and Caribbean intellectuals have been critiquing Lewis for decades.

Lloyd Best (Trinidadian) was the most important critic. He coined the term "Industrialisation by Invitation" specifically to ridicule Lewis's model. He argued that Lewis's strategy, attracting foreign capital to build industry in the Caribbean, would lead to foreign control, dependency, and lack of genuine transformation. Best's most devastating line: he called Lewis "epistemologically an Englishman," meaning that even though Lewis was Black and from the Caribbean, his intellectual framework was entirely shaped by British classical economics. He argued that Lewis "was brought up by Ricardian and Smithian theories and he was Stanley Jevons professor in the University of Manchester. He had to be an Englishman."

Norman Girvan (Jamaican) was a member of the New World Group of Caribbean economists that directly challenged Lewis. In his 2008 lecture at the University of the West Indies, Girvan articulated the central difference: "In the Lewis model, foreign capital in industry is part of the solution while in the Plantation model it is part of the problem." He documented that the attacks on Lewis were personal. Many of his generation saw Lewis "with his English accent and bearing similar to that of an English academic" as "the epitome of the black Englishman." Girvan also noted that Lewis was hurt by these attacks, admitting as much to a colleague.

George Beckford (Jamaican) authored Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World (1972). He led the "Plantation School" which argued that Caribbean economies are "high-cost export propelled satellites specializing in producing raw materials for export." The plantation school's ultimate critique of Lewis was precisely that he overlooked the structural limitations of the economy.

Walter Rodney (Guyanese) wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). While not directly mentioned in the search results, his work is a full-throated critique of the kind of development thinking that Lewis represented. Rodney argued that Africa's underdevelopment was not a lack of integration into the global economy, but the specific form of that integration, extractive, coercive, and designed to benefit Europe.

Kwame Nkrumah (Ghanaian) directly disagreed with Lewis over the Volta River Project and the Akosombo Dam. Nkrumah is "often portrayed as a politician who ignored economic experts." But the evidence shows that Nkrumah "was also trained in economics and wrote several books on political economy examining why and how African energy resources had been exploited and underdeveloped during the colonial era." Nkrumah advocated "energy developmentalism," the achievement of progress by maximising the energy under state control at all costs. Lewis advised against it, favouring a more cautious, market-oriented approach. Nkrumah believed that controlling energy infrastructure was the prerequisite for industrialization. Lewis believed that industrialization would create its own demand for energy.

These critics confirm that you are not alone in questioning Lewis's assumptions. The reason Lewis did not account for external control of Africa's resources is not that he was unaware of it. It is that his policy advice was aimed at working within the existing international economic order, not overthrowing it. He took the existing economy as a starting point, and instead of questioning it, he recorded and analyzed the problems. The plantation school, by contrast, argued that the status quo itself was the problem.

HOW EUROPE USED LEWIS AGAINST AFRICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

The evidence shows that European powers, specifically Britain, actively used and promoted the Lewis model as a deliberate strategy to manage their post-colonial relationship with Africa and the Caribbean.

The British Colonial Office adopted "industrialization by invitation" as a deliberate strategy. British officials framed it as the "rational" and "apolitical" path to development. They rejected proposals for a Caribbean development bank or regional development corporation that would have given local leaders planning power. The model served British interests by attracting foreign capital while limiting British financial risk and maintaining influence.

France operated through direct state control rather than private investment. France "continued to provide Africa with industrial goods under near monopolistic conditions and to restrict local manufactures to foodstuffs, beverages, and household items." French West Africa was required to pay its own way as a colony. The administration imposed forced labour (courvee) and imprisonment (indigenat) to extract resources and maintain control. They fostered production of groundnuts and cotton "where appropriate conditions were present and imposed taxation as a means of inducing participation in the cash economy." No African middle class emerged. The French system was harsher, more centralized, and left no room for African accumulation.

Portugal controlled its African territories for over 400 years. Portuguese colonialism was notoriously extractive and repressive, lasting until the mid-1970s, well after Lewis published his model. The Portuguese did not develop industry in their colonies. They extracted raw materials, including cotton, using forced labor systems that were only abolished late in the colonial period.

Belgium's Congo was a textbook case of extraction without transformation. Under King Leopold II and later the Belgian state, the Congo's rubber, copper, cobalt, and diamonds were extracted using forced labor, mutilation, and terror. No industrial base was built. No capitalist sector emerged.

The Netherlands, through companies like Vlisco, created a different but related structure. Dutch wax prints have been sold to West African markets since 1846, predating Lewis by over a century. The Dutch did not industrialize Africa. They industrialized a product for Africa, produced in Europe, and sold back. African consumers shaped the demand. African labour never entered the "capitalist sector" of production.

What Lewis did was provide an economic model that made this structure appear natural and efficient. By assuming an "unlimited supply of labour" that would move voluntarily if wages were higher, he allowed European powers to claim they were following market principles while ignoring the violence, coercion, and political control that actually maintained the system.

THE SAHEL EXCEPTION

Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, three landlocked Sahelian nations formerly colonized by France, are in the process of taking direct control of their natural resources, particularly gold, uranium, and other minerals. Under the leadership of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), these countries have broken from traditional Franc-afrique arrangements where French companies controlled mining concessions, tax regimes, and currency reserves.

The key shift: resource revenues are increasingly being directed toward domestic infrastructure, factories, and industrial development rather than being extracted and repatriated to France.

Mali has asserted control over its gold mining sector, renegotiating contracts and increasing state ownership in mining operations. The government has redirected mining revenues toward infrastructure projects, including road construction and energy generation. Burkina Faso has increased state control over mining concessions and is channeling resource revenues into industrial development, including textile and manufacturing sectors. Niger, one of the world's largest uranium producers, has moved to reduce French control over its uranium mines and reorient resource revenues toward domestic development priorities.

These nations have severed military ties with France. They have expelled French diplomats. They are building infrastructure with their own resources. They are not waiting for permission.

And they are being punished. Suspended from ECOWAS. Threatened with sanctions. Accused of moving toward "authoritarianism." The interstice is being weaponised against them. The message to other African leaders is clear: if you try to leave, you will be isolated.

The Sahel nations are proving that the interstice is survivable. They are not collapsing. They are not being reinvaded. They are not starving. They are building roads, refineries, and factories with their own gold. The interstice is not an abyss. It is a workshop.

THE FEAR OF THE INTERSTICE TODAY

The fear of the interstice paralyses the African Union and most heads of state. They see the Sahel nations punished. They draw back. They stay within the lines. They negotiate for scraps.

The vacuum is not the absence of Western systems. The vacuum is the absence of African systems to replace them.

The interstice is not a void. It is a printing chamber. It is the hollow where new realities are imprinted before they emerge. It is the threshold between worlds. It is the balance of opposing forces.

The Kongo understood this. They called the hollow (oco) the most primitive form that emerged from the bottom of the first matter, dark matter (ndobe/piu), which is the "printing chamber" of all realities. The source states: "The hollow (oco) is the most primitive form that emerged from the bottom of the first matter, 'dark matter' [ndobe/piu], which is the 'printing chamber' of all realities… A 'printing chamber' for realities that were and realities to come."

The Akan understand the space between wiase (the corporeal world) and asamando (the land of the ancestors). These two worlds are not strictly separated. The source states that the spiritual world of the ancestors is "in no sense another world, but rather a part of this world." The space between them is a permeable threshold that souls cross during birth and death. This is the interstice that cannot be filled because it is the condition for the migration of souls.

The Yoruba understand the Odu, the 256 signs of the Ifá system that map the balancing of polarities, expansion and contraction, light and darkness. The source states: "Most systems of metaphysics are based on the belief that the primal polarity that sustains the physical universe is the tension between expansion and contraction. In Ifa this polarity is usually described as the relationship between darkness and light. This relationship is not considered a conflict between the forces of 'good' and the forces of 'evil.'"

Ubuntu understands the distance between persons as part of relation. The source makes a critical clarification: "The African aphorism incorporates both relation and distance." The space between persons cannot be eliminated. It must be accepted.

The West calls it a vacuum. They panic. They rush to fill it. They cannot tolerate the interstice because their logic demands that every space be occupied, measured, controlled by them. African metaphysics has always understood that the interstice is the condition for creation, recreation, liberation.

THE INTERSTICE IS NOT A PUNISHMENT

The West will not fill the interstice for us. They cannot. Their logic does not know how. The interstice is the one thing they cannot objectify, cannot control, cannot extract.

The Sahel nations are proving that the fear is a lie. They are not collapsing. They are not being reinvaded. They are not starving. They are building roads, refineries, and factories with their own gold. The interstice is not an abyss. It is the printing chamber.

Ghana is processing its own cocoa. Zimbabwe is processing its own lithium. The textile mills collapsed because the interstice was not prepared. They collapsed because the leaders were afraid to step into the gap and build while the gap was open. They invited foreign capital to fill it instead. And when the foreign capital left, the mills closed, the workers were dismissed, and the cotton continued to leave raw.

The interstice is not a punishment. It is an opportunity. It is the space where African systems can grow. But only if we are brave enough to step into it.

The fear of the interstice is the fear of our own capacity. It is the fear that we cannot build what we need. It is the fear that the gap will swallow us. The Sahel nations prove otherwise. Ghana and Zimbabwe prove otherwise. The textile mills collapsed not because the interstice was impossible, but because the leaders refused to enter it.

We can survive the interstice. Let's be brave enough to step into it.

REFERENCES

Lewis, W. Arthur. "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour." The Manchester School, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1954, pp. 139-191.
Lewis, W. Arthur. Report on Industrialisation and the Gold Coast. Government Printing Department, Accra, 1953.
Best, Lloyd. "Outlines of a Model of Pure Plantation Economy." Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1968, pp. 283-326.
Beckford, George. Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World. Oxford University Press, 1972.
Girvan, Norman. "The Caribbean Economy: The Lewis Model and the New World Group." Lecture at the University of the West Indies, 2008.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1972.
Rodney, Walter. "The Groundings with My Brothers." Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1969.
Deguchi, Akira. "A Structural Analysis of Myth: The Mandari of South Sudan." Essays in Northeast African Studies, Senri Ethnological Studies No. 43, 1996, pp. 255-274.
Various sources on Akan cosmology, Kongo metaphysics, Yoruba Ifá system, and Ubuntu philosophy.
Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association. Director-General Alhaji Hamman Kwajaffa interview, 2026.
Kwajaffa, Hamman (Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association). Interview 2026. Cited in ThisDay Living newspaper.
Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (Nigeria). "National Cotton, Textile and Garment Policy." 2025.
ECOWAS Commission. "Adoption of Common External Tariff for Textiles." 2024.
African Development Bank. "Textile Sector Revival Strategy." 2025.
UNCTAD. "Economic Development in Africa Report 2024: Reimagining Industrialization."
International Trade Centre (ITC). Ethical Fashion Initiative Annual Report 2025.
International Trade Centre (ITC). "How to Invest in a Viable Textile and Cotton Value Chain in Africa." April 2025.
Johnson, Philip. "The Collapse of Nigeria's Textile Industry." Journal of African Political Economy, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2024.
Kwajaffa, Hamman. "The State of Textile Industry in Nigeria." ThisDay Living, April 2026.
Lawal, Tola. "Reviving the Nigerian Textile Industry: A Policy Framework." African Economic Review, March 2026.
Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association. "Annual Report and Economic Outlook for CTA Sector." 2025.
Tesfay, Goitom. "Creating & Capturing Value in the Apparel Global Value Chain." 2025.
Business & Human Rights Centre. "Lesotho Garment Sector Update." 2025.
Wikipedia. "Textile industry in Nigeria."
Wikipedia. "Industrialisation in Africa."
Gates, Henry Louis. "In Conversation with Marc-Christian Rousset." UNECE, 2023.
Wall Street Journal. "The Rise and Fall of African Textiles." August 2022.
ThisDay Newspaper (Nigeria). "The Great Nigerian Textile Collapse." 2020.
University of Johannesburg. "Deindustrialization in Southern Africa." 2021.
African Union. "Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want." Addis Ababa, 2015.
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. "Economic Governance Report." 2022.
World Bank. "Structural Adjustment Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa." 2022.
International Monetary Fund. "Trade Liberalization and the African Textile Sector." 2020.
WTO. "African Cotton: Market Access and Development." 2019.
International Labour Organization. "Decent Work in the African Textile Sector." 2023.
UNIDO. "Industrial Policy for Structural Transformation." 2024.
African Development Bank. "Cotton-to-Clothing Value Chains." 2024.
ECOWAS. "Supplemental Act on Textile Sector Development." 2022.
NEPAD. "Textile and Apparel Sector Development Strategy." 2023.
AfCFTA Secretariat. "Textile and Clothing Sector Strategy Paper." 2024.

There is a question I have been sitting with. Has any African academic written about how poverty causes the decline of local cultures and traditions?

The answer is yes. They have. And what they have found should stop us from talking about "cultural preservation" as if culture exists separate from economics.

In the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, among the amaMpondo communities, researcher Nontuthuzelo Mtsini of Walter Sisulu University documented something striking. The political upheavals and economic decline after the postcolonial period resulted in job losses, corruption, crime, poverty, and the loss of the philosophy of ubuntu embedded in cultural beliefs. Her findings are direct: poverty and unemployment were the major causes of the decline of ubuntu among communities. The elders she interviewed indicated that extreme poverty was caused by political tension, economic decline, and cultural changes. When people cannot feed their families, when there are no jobs, when the economy contracts, the transmission of cultural knowledge from elders to children breaks down. You cannot teach ubuntu when you are migrating for work. You cannot pass down weaving techniques when you cannot afford materials. This is not cultural decline as abstraction. This is poverty as erasure.

Dr Chika C Mba, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, made a striking argument at the Africa Wiki Challenge 2025 launch. He used marriage ceremonies as a concrete example. Africans now spend double on traditional weddings and Western-style "white weddings." The abuse of our own culture and identity leads directly to poverty and impoverishment. This is the cycle. When a family spends money on two weddings instead of one, the money leaves the community. When they choose foreign customs over their own, they are not only spending more—they are signaling that their own traditions are not enough. The message is internalized. The next generation sees the foreign as aspirational. The local becomes "traditional" in the pejorative sense—backward, poor, not for people who have made it.

Atoyebi and Yunusa, writing in the Nigerian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology (2024), examined cultural practices among the Idoma and Ogugu peoples of North-Central Nigeria. Their paper highlights how certain traditional beliefs, inheritance of women by their deceased husband's relation, widow's succession rights, refund of bride price after divorce—exemplify what they call the "feminization of poverty." This is not an argument against tradition. It is an argument that poverty and culture cannot be separated. When a practice contributes to poverty, the practice itself becomes vulnerable. And when the practice is abandoned, the entire knowledge system that surrounded it, including the textile traditions, the ceremonial cloths, the symbolic patterns, can disappear with it.

A 2025 study of Ethiopian weavers documents that poverty directly threatens the survival of traditional handwoven garments like the "habesha kemis." With roughly 39 to 43 percent of Ethiopia's 130 million people living below the poverty line (less than $3 per day), demand for traditional handwoven clothes has sharply declined as families cannot afford the higher cost of handmade garments. One weaver with three decades of experience earns only $68 to $102 per month before deducting raw material costs. After 30 years of weaving, this barely covers survival—there is no surplus to pass the craft to a new generation. The youngest weaver in the workshop, 23, is already planning a career change because "the economy isn't what it used to be." This is not just lost income. It is lost transmission.

Getachew, Alemu, and Wudu's 2025 study at Bahir-Dar City documents how poverty exacerbates the challenges facing women weavers. Women face economic difficulties including material shortages and outdated technology. The study notes that household consumption is prioritized over purchasing traditional hand-woven garments—when a family must choose between food and a ceremonial cloth, food wins. The handloom sector's decline is directly linked to deteriorating economic conditions that make handcrafted goods unaffordable for local consumers.

Araya and Beyene's 2024 study on cultural appropriation in Ethiopia's garment weaving industry found that poverty erodes cultural value in two ways. First, when cheaper, mass-produced imitations of traditional designs flood the market due to lack of IP protection, the price of authentic handmade garments is undercut. Second, poverty affects the mindset of educated Africans, who come to see traditional textiles as "cloth for the poor, illiterate, rural dwellers." This is the psychological dimension of poverty. When a traditional cloth becomes associated with economic hardship rather than cultural pride, younger generations reject it in favor of foreign styles perceived as more "modern" or "aspirational."

Amanor-Wilks' 2024 study on the Kente economy in Bonwire, Ghana, documents how the productive role women once played as cotton growers and spinners has been eroded by economic pressures. The research found that while more women are weaving than ever before, they continue to face enormous pressure to stop because the income is insufficient to sustain households even as the traditional gender taboo on women weaving has been suspended.

Areo's 2013 study on Adire (Yoruba indigo-dyed cloth) documents that the art suffered a "lull" in the 1950s due to the flooding of Nigerian markets with cheaper, untaxed imported textiles while locally produced ones were taxed. Hand in hand with this was the mindset of educated Nigerians who then saw Adire "merely as rural cloth for poor, illiterate, rural dwellers." This is the direct link: poverty, enforced by colonial and post-colonial economic policies, led to cultural devaluation, which led to near extinction of the craft.

These studies are not about "preserving culture" in a museum sense. They document material reality: when people cannot afford to buy handmade textiles, weavers cannot afford to weave. When weavers cannot afford to weave, they do not teach their children. When they do not teach their children, the knowledge dies. This is not cultural decline as abstraction. It is poverty as extinction.

The academic literature on poverty and textile decline concentrates heavily on West Africa and Ethiopia. But there are sources from other regions, they just require more searching and often come from non-academic channels such as NGO reports, news articles, and economic studies.

In Namibia, a 2025 Coastal Trade Fair report documents that local fashion designers and tailors struggle because consumers demand lower prices than what handmade garments cost. Maria Franciskus, a fashion designer, stated: "The struggle is that sometimes we buy material and people are demanding low prices… we make a small profit, and it's not enough." The National Museum of Namibia's documentation of traditional leather processing notes that "relative poverty was also reflected in the fact that poorer people were not able to obtain cow fat to keep their skins in good condition." When poverty prevents people from maintaining traditional garments, the knowledge of how to process and care for them erodes. No academic study from Namibia specifically on poverty and traditional textile decline exists.

In Zambia, World Vision reports that due to prolonged drought and climate change, traditional agriculture is no longer reliable, forcing rural families to seek non-agricultural livelihoods. The Tailoring Enterprise Development program was created to equip vulnerable households with sewing skills. This is economic adaptation, but it also represents a shift away from traditional textile knowledge toward production for external markets. This is an NGO report, not academic research. No Zambian academic has published specifically on poverty and traditional textile decline.

In Somaliland, a 2025 report on the artisan industry documents that "traditional crafts such as pottery, blacksmithing, beadwork, and basket weaving are at risk of disappearing due to modernization, cultural stigma, and limited intergenerational transfer." Youth involvement in artisan trades is deterred by "low prestige, inconsistent earnings, and lack of structured growth paths." The Radio Ergo report on Galkayo shoemakers documents that traditional shoemakers have gone out of work because "people have changed their ways… now just throw away broken shoes to buy new ones instead of seeking repairs." One shoemaker, Salad Mahamud Hassan, used to earn $10 daily. Now he lives in a displacement camp and cannot feed his children. This is poverty caused by the decline of traditional crafts, and poverty accelerating the decline. The Somaliland report is from an NGO; the shoemaker story is journalism. No Somali academic has published peer-reviewed research on this topic.

In Tanzania, Pendo Bigambo and colleagues (2024) published a study on Tanzania's batik industry in the African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation & Development. The study found the industry is informal, predominantly women-owned, and faces challenges including poor access to funds, scarcity of tools and materials, and repetitive designs due to lack of creativity training. This is a peer-reviewed academic study by Tanzanian researchers.

In Zimbabwe, a news report on cotton farming documents that the collapse of the cotton industry has "spelled doom for communities where the crop is grown." Farmers have abandoned cotton due to low prices, switching to maize. When raw cotton production collapses, the material base for traditional textile production disappears. This is journalism, not academic research. No Zimbabwean academic study specifically links poverty to traditional textile decline.

In Malawi, a 2007 IPS news report documents that following trade liberalization, Malawi saw an influx of second-hand clothing. Consumers prefer cheap imported clothes because "up to 65 percent of Malawians are living in poverty, which means having less than 1 US dollar per day." Local textile manufacturers cannot compete. Farmers are abandoning cotton because prices are too low. The textile industry has collapsed. This is journalism, not academic research. No Malawian academic study specifically links poverty to traditional textile decline.

An English-speaking researcher will not search in Portuguese. They will not search in French. They will not dig through Angolan journals, Mozambican university repositories, or Cabo Verdean conference proceedings. The information exists, but it is not accessible. When African researchers publish in Portuguese or French, their work does not circulate in English-dominated academic databases. When English-speaking African nations do not translate that research, they are not learning from their neighbors. The weaver in Angola and the weaver in Ghana cannot read each other's struggles because the language barrier is a wall. The system does not need to destroy the knowledge. It only needs to ensure the knowledge never circulates.

In Angola, peer-reviewed research exists. Celestino José Taca, publishing in the Angolan journal Revista Samayonga (Volume 4, Issue 2, 2026, pp. 267-277), conducted fieldwork in Luena between February and June 2025. He writes:

"A pobreza multidimensional constitui uma barreira que afecta, de maneira preocupante, a transmissão de saberes culturais. A valorização cultural de manifestações como o semba e a escrita Sona continua, mas a pobreza e a exclusão educacional ameaçam estas práticas."

Translation: "Multidimensional poverty constitutes a barrier that worryingly affects the transmission of cultural knowledge. The cultural valorization of expressions like semba and Sona writing continues, but poverty and educational exclusion threaten these practices."

This is an African academic publishing in an Angolan journal, directly linking poverty to the potential decline of cultural manifestations. While it does not focus exclusively on textiles, it establishes the framework: poverty erodes the material and social basis for cultural transmission in Angola.

The official Angolan news agency Angop published a report on 17 March 2022, documenting the decline of traditional professions in Bengo province:

"Os alfaiates, sapateiros e costureiras tradicionais estão a tornar-se escassos na província do Bengo. Os jovens não demonstram interesse em aprender estas profissões devido às baixas receitas e ao custo elevado dos materiais. Grandes quantidades de roupa importada pronta-a-vestir e a industrialização são citadas como causas directas."

Translation: "Traditional tailors, shoemakers, and seamstresses are becoming scarce in Bengo province. Young people show no interest in learning these professions due to low income and the high cost of materials. Large quantities of imported ready-to-wear clothing and industrialization are cited as direct causes."

Antonio Gaspar, a 60-year-old shoemaker, states that the province lacks these services, forcing people to travel to Luanda for repairs. David Chambo, a shoemaker for over 20 years, personally trains over 50 young people but says it "has not been easy." This is official documentation from Angola's state news agency, citing multiple artisans by name, with direct quotes about poverty, imported goods, and generational disinterest as drivers of decline.

Angolan researcher Leonardo Tuyenikumwe published a scientific book in 2024, "Os khoinsan (khun e khwe) de Angola e seus desafios actuais" (The Khoisan of Angola and Their Current Challenges). He writes:

"Os khoinsan (khun e khwe) de Angola enfrentam desafios actuais graves. A situação da pobreza extrema e da fome está a forçar estas comunidades a mudar o seu estilo de vida e a abandonar práticas ancestrais."

Translation: "The Khoisan (Khun and Khwe) of Angola face serious current challenges. The situation of extreme poverty and hunger is forcing these communities to change their lifestyle and abandon ancestral practices."

The book explicitly links poverty to the erosion of cultural traditions among indigenous peoples in Angola.

In Mozambique, Cardoso Esboi of the Catholic University of Mozambique published a study in 2007:

"A produção de algodão é a cultura não alimentar com maior rendimento e cria auto-emprego para a maioria das famílias rurais. No entanto, os baixos níveis de educação, a dependência de factores naturais (clima, pragas) e a falta de infra-estruturas sociais limitam os agricultores de aproveitar plenamente as condições favoráveis do mercado."

Translation: "Cotton production is the highest earning non-food crop and creates auto-employment for most rural households. However, low education levels, dependence on natural factors (weather, pests), and lack of social infrastructure constrain farmers from taking full advantage of favorable market conditions."

This is a Mozambican researcher directly linking cotton to poverty. When cotton farming fails to lift farmers out of poverty, the material base for textile production erodes. No Mozambican academic has published specifically on the decline of traditional capulana due to poverty—a central textile tradition in Mozambique. The gap confirms the point: research on traditional textile decline is limited.

In Cabo Verde, the pano d'obra (meaning "laborous cloth") was "highly prized for trading along the West African coast, from the second half of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century." From the 19th century, "a marked decline in the manufacture of these historic textiles is witnessed due to the demise of the local cotton and dyes production, alongside with a lack of demand for them, particularly the ones with high-value price." Today, local weavers use mostly imported yarn, including synthetic. The decline is documented, but the researcher presenting this at the Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium is from the University of Porto, Portugal—not a Cabo Verdean scholar. No academic source by a Cabo Verdean scholar exists on this topic.

For Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Equatorial Guinea, no academic sources by local scholars were found. This is a complete research gap. It does not mean the phenomenon does not exist. It means African researchers have not yet documented it—or the documentation exists but is not indexed in accessible databases.

The focus on cotton in African textile production is not natural. It was engineered. Before Europeans arrived, Portuguese-speaking Africa used raffia, palm fiber, sisal, wild rhubarb root dyes, and other local materials. Cotton became dominant because it was exportable. Colonial regimes controlled it, channeled it into global trade, and extracted it for profit rather than local use. The knowledge of how to work with raffia, palm fiber, and sisal was not written. It was not patented. It was not passed down. And because those materials had no export value, their knowledge systems were not valued.

The Kuba people of Central Africa are renowned for a specific process that turns stiff raffia plant fiber into a soft textile. Men weave the base cloth from fine raffia fibers. Women then create intricate geometric patterns using a specialized cut-pile embroidery technique. After the pile is cut, the fibers are rubbed together, which gives the surface a silky lustre reminiscent of velvet, hence the name "velvet raffia." This was historically used as a form of currency, as ceremonial dress, and to adorn royal stools. An unprocessed raffia fiber is stiff, but after these specialized techniques, it can be as soft as cotton, with a luxurious velvet-like feel. This is not just a craft. It is a sophisticated material engineering process.

The argument that raffia is rough and cotton is soft is historically inaccurate. It ignores the existence of specialized, high-skill techniques that produce a textile of exceptional quality, softness, and prestige. As poverty increased, communities could not afford the time or resources for the labor-intensive velvet technique. They defaulted to the quicker, stiffer versions of raffia, or they abandoned raffia altogether for cheaper, imported cotton. Over time, this created a false narrative that "raffia is stiff" and "cotton is soft." The knowledge to make velvet raffia is at risk of being lost, not just a craft disappearing, but the disappearance of a specific, sophisticated material engineering process.

The objects remain. But they remain under European control. The British Museum holds nearly 8 million objects. Only 1 percent are on public display at any time. The other 99 percent are in storage. The raffia cloth from Equatorial Guinea (1820) sits in Reading, England. The Angolan raffia costume (1929-1936) sits in Montreal, Canada. The objects are not destroyed. They are contained. Sealed. Removed from the communities that made them. The knowledge that the object represents, the technique, the material understanding, the transmission from one generation to the next, can die even as the object itself is perfectly preserved. The weaver dies. The language shifts. The materials become unavailable. The ceremony stops. The child moves to the city. The museum catalogues the cloth. The cloth is safe. The knowledge is not.

Hoarding is not destruction. It is preservation in a cage. The object remains. The people change. The knowledge thins. The museum wins.

Oliver Mtapuri's edited volume "African Perspectives on Poverty, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and Innovation" (Springer, 2022) dedicates chapters to the "Onomastic and Conceptual Pathologisation of African Culture as a Creation and Perpetuation of African Poverty in Zimbabwe." The title alone says enough. When African culture is pathologized—treated as the cause of poverty rather than the solution, the logic is inverted. The cure becomes abandoning culture. The abandonment leads to more poverty. The cycle continues.

The research exists. African scholars have documented it. South Africa. Nigeria. Ghana. Ethiopia. Zimbabwe. Angola. Mozambique. The evidence is clear: poverty destroys the material basis for cultural transmission. But the research is fragmented. The language barriers prevent circulation. The museums hold the objects but not the knowledge. The economic policies continue to favor imported goods over local production.

African textile knowledge is declining, in some spaces perhaps already extinct. When will we document what remains before it is gone, when will we build systems that keep it alive, not just preserved in a crate in a foreign country.

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References

· Mtsini, Nontuthuzelo. "Reinstating cultural beliefs and Ubuntu in the AmaMpondo communities in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa." E-Journal of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, Vol. 6 No. 9 (2025). Walter Sisulu University, South Africa.
· Mba, Chika C. Speech at Africa Wiki Challenge 2025 launch. GhanaWeb, 25 May 2025. Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
· Atoyebi, Timothy Abayomi and Yunusa, Edime. "Cultural Practices and Women's Rights among Idoma and Ogugu Peoples of North-Central, Nigeria: Implications for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development." The Nigerian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, Volume 22, No. 2, November 2024, pp. 102-114. Prince Abubakar Audu University, Nigeria.
· Getachew, Alemu, and Wudu. 2025 study at Bahir-Dar City, Ethiopia.
· Araya and Beyene. 2024 study on cultural appropriation in Ethiopia's garment weaving industry.
· Amanor-Wilks. 2024 study on the Kente economy in Bonwire, Ghana.
· Areo. 2013 study on Adire (Yoruba indigo-dyed cloth).
· Wayessa, Bula S. "My Meals Are in the Pots: Making Pots and Meals in Wollega, Southwest Ethiopia." African Archaeological Review, Volume 40, 2023, pp. 519–529.
· Laitin, David D. and Ramachandran, Rajesh. "Language Policy as the Culprit of Africa's Growth Tragedy." Journal of Politics, 2025. Stanford University / Monash University Malaysia.
· Mtapuri, Oliver (ed.). African Perspectives on Poverty, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and Innovation. Springer, 2022.
· Taca, Celestino José. "Diversidade Cultural, Social e Económica em África com Ênfase em Angola Desafios e Perspectivas Contemporâneas." Revista Samayonga, Volume 4, Issue 2, 2026, pp. 267-277.
· Angop (Angola News Agency). "Profissões tradicionais em risco de extinção no Bengo." 17 March 2022.
· Tuyenikumwe, Leonardo. Os khoinsan (khun e khwe) de Angola e seus desafios actuais. Vamos Editora, 2024.
· Esboi, Cardoso. "Impact of Cotton Production Among Cotton Farmers in Maringue District of Sofala Province – Mozambique." Universidade Católica de Moçambique (UCM), 2007. Available at: http://www.repositorio.ucm.ac.mz/handle/123456789/99
· Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium. "A Contribution to the Preservation and Revival of the Cabo Verdean pano d'obra Textiles."
· Hansen, Karen Tranberg. "Riches from Rags or Persistent Poverty? The Working Lives of Secondhand Clothing Vendors in Maputo, Mozambique." Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2012, pp. 222-237.
· Bigambo, Pendo et al. 2024 study on Tanzania's batik industry. African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation & Development.
· Namibia Coastal Trade Fair 2025 report.
· World Vision Zambia. Tailoring Enterprise Development program reports.
· Solidaarisuus. 2025 report on artisan industry in Somaliland.
· Radio Ergo. Report on Galkayo shoemakers.
· IPS news agency. 2007 report on Malawi second-hand clothing.
· Reading Museum. Raffia cloth from Equatorial Guinea (1820). Collection record.
· Redpath Museum, McGill University. Angolan raffia costume (1929-1936). Collection record.
· British Museum. Papel cloth from Guinea-Bissau (c. 1989). Collection record.

There is a word that diplomats and academics use. Soft power. Let me translate.

Soft power means getting what you want without using force. You do not send soldiers. You do not impose sanctions. Instead, you make people want what you have. You make your culture, your products, your values seem attractive, modern, and desirable.

When a young person in Lagos saves money for months to buy a Louis Vuitton bag made in France, that is soft power. When a fashion designer in Accra studies pattern-making at a Chinese university and returns to teach Chinese cutting methods, that is soft power. When a family in Abidjan chooses Dutch wax prints for a wedding because "that is the real fabric," that is soft power.

No one forced them. They were attracted. The attraction is the instrument.

I am not stating it is wrong for Africans to learn new techniques in textiles. That is not what this post is about. The exchange of knowledge across cultures is not the problem. The problem is the asymmetry. External actors have strategies, budgets, and coordinated frameworks. They study our markets, our tastes, our vulnerabilities. We do not fund research into how their strategies operate. We do not train diplomats in textile diplomacy. We do not build shields. The result is not cultural exchange. It is extraction wearing a friendly face.

External actors have been using textiles to project soft power into Africa for centuries. The Dutch have done it since 1846. The French do it through luxury brands. The Chinese are doing it now through cheaper fabrics and cultural centres. The Americans have done it through trade agreements, development programmes, and diplomatic initiatives.

They all have strategies. They all have budgets. They all study African markets, African tastes, and African vulnerabilities.

We have not funded research into how these strategies operate. We have not trained diplomats in textile diplomacy. We have not built shields.

This post is an attempt to change that. Not to adopt their frameworks. To understand them, translate them, and help us build our own systems as a shield. We do not need to copy what they have built. Their systems serve their interests, not ours. What we build will look different. It will be rooted in our own logic, our own values, our own ways of organising knowledge. The shield is not a replica. It is a response.

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What Soft Power Is and What It Can Achieve

Soft power was coined by Joseph Nye in 1990. He defined it as "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments."

When a country possesses soft power, it does not need to make concessions or trade-offs to achieve its goals. It simply gets its way "softly." Soft power operates through the accumulation of "political capital"—the ability to rally others around its objectives.

Soft power can generate favourable perceptions of a country's people, culture, and policies, facilitate greater cooperation between nations, help change target countries' policies or political environments, and prevent, manage, and mitigate conflicts.

But soft power also constrains. A reputation for honour, coherence, and values dictates unpalatable political choices. Sudden deviance from a country's projected image leads to loss of trust. This is why external actors invest so heavily in maintaining consistent, attractive cultural narratives. They cannot afford to be exposed.

Soft power originates from three primary sources: culture (both "high brow" and popular forms like art, fashion, music, film, and textiles), political values (democracy, human rights, individualism, freedom, as projected internationally), and foreign policies (perceived as legitimate, multilateral, and having moral authority).

In the context of fashion and textiles, soft power operates through luxury branding that positions certain aesthetics as aspirational, the global dominance of certain design vocabularies that become "neutral" or "universal" while erasing their origins, educational and exchange programmes that train designers in foreign frameworks, and museum exhibitions that canonise some textile traditions while marginalising others.

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How to Recognise Soft Power When You See It

You do not need a degree. You need to ask four questions.

1. Who profits? If the fabric is worn in Accra but the company is registered in Amsterdam, the profit leaves. That is soft power at work.
2. Who frames the story? If a luxury house calls a bag "a modern homage to the global traveler" but does not mention the expulsion of migrants that gave the bag its name, they are controlling the narrative. That is soft power.
3. Who sets the standard? If Chinese universities train African designers in Chinese cutting methods, and those designers teach those methods to their students, soon the "right way" to sew will be Chinese. That is soft power.
4. Who defines "quality"? If Dutch wax prints are considered "real fabric" and locally made textiles are considered "traditional" or "not for business," the definition of quality has been captured. That is soft power.

These four questions are your detection framework. Use them.

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External Soft Power Actors – How They Operate

The Netherlands: Vlisco and 180 Years of Market Dominance

The Dutch company Vlisco has been producing wax prints for West and Central Africa since 1846. Nearly 180 years. The fabric is designed in the Netherlands, registered in the United Kingdom, and given popular names by African women traders called "nanas." The power dynamic is clear: European designs, European profits, African naming, African consumption, African cultural meaning attached to a European product.

The Vlisco story is the same pattern traced in our "Research is national security" series. African capital tried to buy the company. The bid was higher. It was rejected. The company remains European-owned. The soft power continues to flow outward.

France: Luxury Branding and the Capture of "Taste"

French perfumes constructed a "fashionable ethos" that positioned France as the arbiter of taste globally. This is soft power through scent and packaging—textile-adjacent because fashion and perfume are marketed together and signify the same aspirational lifestyle.

In 2021, Louis Vuitton released a Kente-inspired menswear collection designed by Virgil Abloh (American of Ghanaian descent). The suits sold out globally. No credit to Ghanaian weavers. In 2025, they released the "Ghana Must Go" bag—a luxury version of the woven polypropylene bag used by West African migrants. The bag is named after a painful chapter in Ghanaian history—the 1983 expulsion of Ghanaians from Nigeria. Louis Vuitton markets it as "a modern homage to the global traveler." The original bag was a symbol of displacement. They turned it into a $3,000 accessory.

Ghanaian journalist and Kente Ambassador Amma Prempeh analysed this: "Both collections treat West African aesthetics as visual motifs rather than cultural inheritances. They do not credit local makers or designers for their sources. Instead, they use broad themes like 'heritage' and 'migration,' detaching designs from their sociopolitical roots."

The soft power works. The profits leave. The original creators are not credited.

China: Gradualism, Affordability, and Cultural Centres

Chinese wax prints initially entered the market as counterfeits of Dutch designs. Today, brands like Hitarget, Phoenix, and Binta Wax compete directly. Not because they are superior. Because they are cheaper. Affordability is soft power when it shapes what people can buy, what they consider "good enough," and which factories stay open.

Nigerian researcher Sandra Oliver‑Mbonu has documented how the China Cultural Centre Nigeria uses fashion shows to strategically stage Chinese textile heritage alongside Nigerian fabrics. They showcase China's sartorial expertise while fostering supposedly "transcultural" dialogue. Off the runway, Nigerian designers incorporate Chinese aesthetic elements into everyday garments.

But here is the warning. These exchanges are not neutral. They invoke historical memories of colonial dress politics. They generate ambivalent responses that reveal post‑colonial tensions between authenticity and cosmopolitan aspiration.

Fairuzah Atchulo, a Ghanaian PhD candidate, is documenting another layer of this infiltration. Her research focuses on how sizing systems in global fashion exclude African bodies. She asks: why are there no "African sizes" on international platforms? Her answer is "the entangled histories of colonialism in global sizing systems" – a form of neo‑colonial control imposed through fabric and fit.

China's approach favours gradualism, where subtle changes tweak preexisting styles. In Mozambique, consumers balance these influences, seeking a "novidade" (novelty) that is neither fully foreign nor fully local. The term is "not too African, not too Chinese."

The United States: Trade Agreements, Development Programmes, and Economic Leverage

US soft power in textiles operates primarily through trade and development initiatives rather than cultural branding. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) has been the central instrument since 2000, offering duty-free access to the US market for over 6,000 product lines from eligible sub-Saharan African countries. The apparel provisions, including the transformative third‑country fabric allowance, became the backbone of export success stories in Lesotho, Kenya, and Madagascar.

The impact has been significant. Kenya's apparel exports to the United States under AGOA grew from $55 million in 2001 to $603 million in 2022, constituting 67.6 per cent of the country's total exports to the US.

However, this soft power comes with conditions. In 2025, when AGOA expired and new US tariffs were introduced, the consequences were severe. Lesotho, where textile and apparel products made up over 85 per cent of its $2.37 billion exports to the US, saw its garments facing 15 per cent tariffs. The result: young people's unemployment rose to 50 per cent, and the Lesotho government declared a two‑year state of emergency.

The US also uses grants and co‑investment to shape the African apparel industry. In 2021, the West Africa Trade & Investment Hub, funded by USAID, provided a $1.35 million grant to establish a model garment factory in Ghana, creating 800 fair‑wage jobs with at least 70 per cent going to women. The stated goal was to demonstrate that "ethical garment manufacturing can be the norm."

But here is the warning. These initiatives are not charity. They serve US strategic interests, including diversifying supply chains away from Asia and creating favourable conditions for American buyers. The soft power message is: the US helps Africa build industry. The intended audience is not just Africa but the world watching. The result is favourable perceptions of the US as a benevolent partner—even as tariff policies simultaneously undermine the same industries in other African countries.

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The Recognition Gap – How African Soft Power Is Systematically Undervalued

The Global Soft Power Index 2026 ranks the United States first, China second, Japan third, and the United Kingdom fourth. No African country appears in the top tier.

This ranking matters. It shapes global perceptions of "value." When Chinese silk, French luxury, and Italian leather are ranked as "high soft power," they command premium prices. When African textiles are not ranked, they are perceived as "commodities," not "brands."

The Index reveals a structural problem. The metrics used to measure soft power – familiarity, reputation, influence, governance, culture, education, business environment – were designed in the Global North. African textile systems are not measured because the frameworks were not built for them.

This is the same pattern we have traced across our work. The patent system was not built for collective knowledge. The legal frameworks were not built for traditional knowledge. The soft power metrics were not built for African cultural influence.

We do not need to seek recognition from these frameworks. We need to understand them so we can protect ourselves from them. And we need to build our own ways of organising, valuing, and projecting our knowledge, based on our own logic, not theirs.

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African Counter‑Soft Power – The Shield Already Exists

The response to external soft power is not rejection. It is projection. Building African soft power that operates on African terms.

Ghana has demonstrated how this works. At the 2026 African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ghanaian ministers wore traditional smocks (Batakari/Fugu). The result: foreign ministers from across Africa requested their own smocks in national colours. Ghana is now planning a "fugu and kente" exhibition in Zambia, and its ambassadors have been instructed to organise "Fugu and Kente Fairs" for national day celebrations.

Lagos State is doing the same. Governor Sanwo-Olu's administration is explicitly investing in Adire as "a strategic driver of diplomacy, innovation, and economic growth" – turning "heritage into an engine for diplomacy and economic growth."

Historically, Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar (1886) used handwoven silk textiles as diplomatic gifts to US President Grover Cleveland to challenge US recognition of French colonization. The Bamileke people of Cameroon used ndop cloth as gifts among elites across chieftaincies, with geometric designs conveying royal hospitality, diplomacy, and sacred knowledge.

Africans have always understood textiles as tools of diplomacy and influence. The difference is that our ancestors did not call it "soft power." They just did it.

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What We Must Do – Building the Shield

We do not advocate rejecting external textiles or closing markets. The shield is not a wall. The shield is awareness plus our own systems.

Awareness means ordinary people can recognise soft power when they see it. They know why Louis Vuitton named a bag after an expulsion. They know why Chinese wax prints are cheaper. They know why US-backed factories in Ghana produce for American brands. They make informed choices.

Our own systems means African governments investing in textile diplomacy. Not copying the structures of France, China, or the US. Not replicating their metrics or their methods. Building what works for us.

What our systems will look like:

· They will be rooted in African logics, not Western frameworks
· They will centre collective knowledge, not individual patents
· They will be accountable to African communities, not foreign shareholders
· They will measure success by African priorities, not global rankings designed elsewhere

African governments must:

1. Train ambassadors in textile heritage. Use locally made fabrics for state gifts. Mandate local fabrics for official functions. Require cultural centres abroad to feature African textiles.
2. Establish textile diplomacy units within foreign ministries. Deploy textiles as strategic gifts at bilateral meetings. Embed textile promotion in trade missions.
3. Fund African scholars documenting soft power. Sandra Oliver‑Mbonu and Fairuzah Atchulo are doing rigorous, timely, African-led research. They should be scaled, funded, and placed at the centre of national security research.
4. Build intentional educational pipelines. Ensure students who study design abroad also study local textile systems. Fund apprenticeships with master weavers alongside university degrees.
5. Use the AfCFTA to harmonise textile standards and create a continental market for African-designed, African-produced, African-branded textiles. Not to replicate European standards, but to set our own.
6. Measure what matters to us. Track what we value: community wellbeing, cultural continuity, ecological sustainability, local ownership. Use data to inform our own decisions, not to seek validation from external rankings.

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External soft power is not a conspiracy, It is strategy, It is funded, It is coordinated, It works.

We have not funded the counter‑research, not built the shield. We have left ourselves exposed to attraction without awareness, desire without understanding, and market dominance without local capacity.

We do not need to adopt their frameworks. We do not need to replicate their systems. We need to understand them so we can recognise when they are operating on us. And we need to build our own systems—based on our own logic, our own values, our own ways of organising knowledge—as a shield.

The first step is awareness. The second step is our own systems, not copies, not replicas bud responses.

Ghana showed what the shield looks like at the AU Summit, Lagos State is building its own shield and the scholars are doing the research. The weavers are also doing the work. We must fund this work, scale it, and protect it. The shield is not a wall rather it is awareness plus our own infrastructure.

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References

· Atchulo, Fairuzah M. "Standardized size and sizing systems and neo-colonialism in global fashion." ERC Project "China Africa Fashion Power" (CAFP), University of Amsterdam.
· Brand Finance. "Global Soft Power Index 2026."
· Eicher, Joanne and Erekosima, Tonye. "Cultural authentication" framework for Sino-African fashion.
· Lemire, Beverly. The Force of Fashion in Politics and Society. 2010.
· Nye, Joseph S. Jr. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Public Affairs, 2004.
· Oliver‑Mbonu, Sandra Ifunanya. "Soft power in stitches: China's fashion projection in Nigeria." MA Thesis, University of Victoria, 2025.
· Prempeh, Amma. "Louis Vuitton's Kente and Ghana Must Go: West African aesthetics as visual motifs." 2025.
· USAID West Africa Trade & Investment Hub. "Model garment factory in Ghana." 2021.
· Various news reports. Ghana's "smock diplomacy" at 39th African Union Summit, February 2026.
· Various news reports. Lagos State Adire diplomacy and cultural soft power investment, June 2025.

You have read the five‑part series. You have followed the evidence. The RMRDC loom, patented and forgotten. The mycelium innovation, celebrated and exposed. The Vlisco bid, higher and rejected. The pattern is undeniable.

But you have not yet heard the deepest lesson.

Research into African communities has been used to infiltrate us, map our vulnerabilities, and destabilise our nations. External actors studied us—not to help, but to exploit. And when the damage was done, our own governments never invested in the research that could rebuild.

This is not paranoia. This is documented history. And it is happening in a field you might least expect: arts and textiles.

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The Destruction of Knowledge: Timbuktu and the Colonial Library

In 2013, as French military jets bombed northern Mali, a group of African scholars gathered in Dakar for a CODESRIA conference. The topic was the "colonial library"—the vast archive of Western knowledge that has shaped how Africa is studied, understood, and governed.

Then the news came. Islamist rebels had set fire to the Timbuktu manuscript libraries. Thousands of priceless texts—centuries of West African scholarship—were feared lost.

The conference panicked. Speakers demanded that France, the former coloniser, intervene to "save" the manuscripts.

Then a scholar named Zubairu Wai stood up. He asked a question that should have stopped everyone in the room. Why are we calling the arsonist to put out the fire?

France, through NATO's destabilisation of Libya, had helped create the very crisis that now threatened Timbuktu. Yet the research infrastructure that had studied these manuscripts for decades—funded by European institutions, catalogued in European languages, validated by European credentials—had conditioned African scholars to see France as the protector, not the perpetrator.

The colonial library had done its work. Research was weaponised to create dependency, shape perception, and erase the structural violence of the very actors being called upon to intervene.

When a Western researcher arrives to document your community's textile traditions, they extract knowledge. They publish it in journals your community does not read. They build careers on it. The community is never consulted again. The solution is not to ask for better consultation. The solution is to build our own research institutions that answer to our own communities.

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The Hollow State: Why African Governments Never Funded the Counter‑Research

If research can be weaponised, then counter‑research must be deployed. But African governments have failed to invest in the knowledge systems that could detect, resist, and rebuild.

Jeremiah Arowosegbe, a Nigerian scholar, has documented the reality. The post‑colonial state is authoritarian, dependent, non‑developmental, and subversive. It undermines knowledge production instead of nurturing it. Research is chronically underfunded. What little exists is shaped by donor priorities, not national needs.

Samwel Oando, a Kenyan researcher, has shown how Indigenous knowledge and women's voices are systematically excluded from Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) frameworks. The consequence is clear: interventions fail because they do not speak to local realities. The very knowledge that could stabilise communities is ignored.

While external actors study African communities for their own purposes, African governments leave the tools of rebuilding on the shelf.

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The Weapon That Could Rebuild: Textiles as Resistance and Repair

The frameworks already exist. They are not in Western textbooks. They are encoded in thread.

Dr. Precious Wapukha of Kibabii University in Kenya has documented how Samburu women use beadwork as a sophisticated system of coded messaging for conflict resolution. The colours carry meaning. Blue represents water and blessings. White means harmony. Red symbolises blood, connection, and strength. Green stands for healing and fertility.

These are not ornaments. They are a language. Women use beadwork to facilitate dialogue, express reconciliation, and reinforce communal bonds. They gift intricately designed necklaces and bracelets to rival clans as symbols of goodwill.

This is not "craft." This is peace‑building technology. And it works.

Wapukha's research demonstrates that Indigenous women's peace initiatives are more context‑friendly and effective than state‑centric models. But without government funding, without institutional support, without recognition that textile knowledge is national security knowledge, these frameworks remain isolated and unable to scale.

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Thread as Compass: The Counter‑Weapon That Worked Without a Single Written Word

Now consider what the enslaved built in America. While European enslavers documented their transactions in ledgers, signed their names on manifests, and recorded their property in bound volumes, the enslaved constructed a counter‑intelligence network using thread and cloth.

They stitched escape routes into quilts. They coded directions into patches and patterns. They passed information in plain sight—hung on clotheslines, draped over fences, displayed in windows—while the enslavers saw only fabric.

This was a successful counter‑weapon. Quilt codes guided enslaved people north to freedom. The system worked. It was not written. It was not patented. It was not archived in any institution that the colonizers controlled.

Now consider the demand that followed. European frameworks require written evidence. They dismiss oral tradition. They question memory. They demand documentation produced by the very people who benefited from the system of enslavement. This is not neutrality. This is a trap.

The enslaved did not leave written records of their escape codes. As scholar Raymond Dobard, a history professor at Howard University, has stated: "The code was a way to say something to a person in the presence of many others without the others knowing. It was a way of giving direction without saying, 'Go northwest.'"

But the European framework demands the written word. It demands the signed document. It demands the paper trail. When that paper trail does not exist, the system declares the knowledge invalid.

The same educational systems that colonizers enforced on Africa do the same. Students are taught that if something is not written, it is not reliable. If it is not documented in a European language, it is not credible. If it is passed down through oral tradition, it is suspect.

This instills doubt into generation after generation. African children learn to distrust the knowledge of their own grandparents. They learn that their ancestors' intelligence—woven into thread, stitched into quilts, coded in beadwork—does not count as real knowledge because it was never written in a book.

The asymmetry of the archive is the violence. The colonizers had paper. The enslaved had thread. The colonizers built universities. The enslaved built escape routes.

The quilt code worked. It succeeded. It freed people. That is enough. The knowledge does not need the permission of the system that was designed to imprison its creators.

The task is not to make European frameworks recognise this knowledge. The task is to build our own systems where this knowledge takes central space in our societies. To build universities that teach quilt codes alongside calculus. To build archives that centre oral tradition. To build patent systems designed for collective, embodied knowledge.

The Niger Bend wool textiles, the algorithmic logic of Kuba cloth, the peace‑building technology of Samburu beadwork, the escape codes stitched into quilts—these knowledge systems stand on their own. They do not need validation from the institutions that dismissed them. They need African institutions built to hold them.

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Detecting Infiltration: How Fashion Reveals Soft Power Operations

If textiles can heal and textiles can liberate, they can also be used to infiltrate.

Sandra Oliver‑Mbonu, a Nigerian researcher at the University of Victoria, has produced a groundbreaking study on China's soft power projection through fashion in Nigeria.

Her research reveals how the China Cultural Centre Nigeria uses fashion shows to strategically stage Chinese textile heritage alongside Nigerian fabrics. They showcase China's sartorial expertise while fostering supposedly "transcultural" dialogue. Off the runway, Nigerian designers incorporate Chinese aesthetic elements into everyday garments. This is bottom‑up negotiation and local agency.

But here is the warning. These exchanges are not neutral. They invoke historical memories of colonial dress politics. They generate ambivalent responses that reveal post‑colonial tensions between authenticity and cosmopolitan aspiration.

African governments should be funding this research. Not to reject cultural exchange, but to understand it. To detect when influence operations are at work. To negotiate from a position of knowledge. And to ensure that African designers, weavers, and artists are not merely the subjects of others' soft power strategies.

Oliver‑Mbonu's work is rigorous, timely, and African. It should be scaled.

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From Weaponization to Reconstruction: A Call to Action

Timbuktu Research and Design is in a unique position. It is not an outsider studying African textiles from a distance. It works directly with weavers, reconstructs looms, and retrieves knowledge that has been dismissed as "craft."

Timbuktu Research and Design has already shown that the Niger Bend wool textiles are engineered. Algorithmic. Mathematical. Rule‑based. It has shown that the Tellem textiles encode generative logic. It has shown that the Dinka, the Yoruba, the Zulu, and the Xhosa share a metaphysical framework that Western binary logic could never grasp.

Now we must show that this knowledge is not just heritage. It is infrastructure.

The same frameworks that study how beadwork mediates conflict can be adapted to rebuild communities after destabilisation. The same frameworks that study how quilts encoded escape can be adapted to resist surveillance. The same frameworks that study how fashion projects soft power can be adapted to counter it.

This is not a metaphor. This is methodology. And we are the ones who will build it.

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What Governments Must Do

African governments must fund the documentation of Indigenous textile knowledge. Not as folklore. As technology. Wapukha's beadwork research should be expanded, not left to isolated academics.

They must establish research programmes on cultural soft power. Oliver‑Mbonu's work should be replicated across the continent, studying how external actors use arts and culture to project influence.

They must integrate Indigenous knowledge into national security frameworks. Oando's critique of CVE must be heeded. Beadwork, weaving, quilt codes, and textile symbolism should be recognised as legitimate tools for conflict resolution, escape, and community rebuilding.

They must protect the knowledge that is already there. The Timbuktu manuscripts were nearly lost not because of rebels alone, but because the infrastructure to protect them was dependent on external actors. African governments must build their own archives, their own digitisation projects, and their own legal frameworks.

They must reform their educational systems. The colonial curriculum that teaches African children to distrust oral tradition must be replaced. Students must learn that knowledge encoded in thread is as valid as knowledge encoded in text.

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The Closing

Research was weaponised against African communities. External actors studied our vulnerabilities, mapped our resources, and used that knowledge to infiltrate and destabilise.

African governments never invested in the research that could rebuild what was broken.

But the frameworks exist. They are encoded in thread, in beadwork, in quilts, in manuscripts, in the logic of our textiles. African scholars are documenting them. Practitioners are reviving them.

The quilt code worked. The beadwork works. The textiles have always been technology.

The same knowledge that was weaponised against us can be the knowledge that rebuilds us. The difference lies in building our own systems. Our own research agendas. Our own funding. Our own institutions. The framework exists. It has always existed. Now we must build the infrastructure to hold it.

Build. Protect. Or lose it.

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References

· Arowosegbe, Jeremiah O. "Postcolonial state and knowledge production in Africa." (Current research)
· Dobard, Raymond, and Tobin, Jacqueline. Hidden in Plain View: The Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. Doubleday, 2000.
· Dobard, Raymond. Interview statements on the quilt code. Howard University archives.
· Molins Lliteras, Susana. "The dysfunctional copy: 'Mali Magic,' loss and the digital remake of the Timbuktu archive." Social Dynamics, 2024.
· Musumba, Levis. "Stitching Bonds, Weaving Peace." LinkedIn, 2023.
· Oando, Samwel. "CVE and the exclusion of indigenous knowledge." In Local Perspectives on Countering Violent Extremism, Taylor & Francis, 2024.
· Oliver‑Mbonu, Sandra Ifunanya. "Soft power in stitches: China's fashion projection in Nigeria." MA Thesis, University of Victoria, 2025.
· Wai, Zubairu. "The colonial library and the 2013 military intervention in Mali." CODESRIA conference proceedings, 2013.
· Wapukha, Precious. "The Art of Peace: Beauty, Beadwork and Democracy in Indigenous Conflict Resolution in Samburu Culture, Kenya." Democracy in Africa, 2025.

There is a technique hidden in the folds of African textile history. It uses cassava paste—simple, abundant, biodegradable—to create patterns on fabric. The paste resists indigo dye. When the cloth is dipped, the paste protects the areas beneath it. What emerges is pattern. What emerges is mathematics. What emerges is centuries of knowledge encoded in starch and leaf.

The West knows wax. The West industrialised batik. The West also knows cassava resist. European traders collected samples. They studied the patterns. They understood the technique. They chose to ignore it.

This is not ignorance. This is a decision.

What Is Cassava Resist Dyeing?

The technique is called adire eleko among the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. Cassava flour is mixed with water, boiled, and strained into a thick starch paste . The paste is applied to cotton cloth using a feather, a brush, or a stencil cut into a design . Where the paste touches the cloth, dye cannot penetrate. The cloth is then dipped into an indigo vat made from the elu plant (Lonchocarpus cyanescens), which is pounded, shaped into balls, dried, and fermented for anywhere from three weeks to six months . The cloth is dipped repeatedly. Each dip deepens the blue. When the final color is achieved, the starch is scraped off. What remains is a pattern of white or light blue against a deep indigo ground.

The technique is slow. It takes roughly three days to complete one yard, and about two weeks to complete five yards . The starch is applied by hand. The patterns are not random. They encode Yoruba history, mythology, social commentary, and even the sound of beads on dancers' hips—a pattern called Sun Bebe, which means "lifting up the sun" and refers to beads that would move up and down as girls danced before their future husbands .

This is not craft. This is technology. This is chemistry, material science, design logic, and cultural memory all at once.

The Knowledge Keepers

In Ogun State, particularly in Abeokuta, adire eleko is not taught in schools. It is not written in books. It is passed down within specific families. One particular family is known as the master of this art, and it remains so to this day . The technique is taught and learned only within the family.

This is not a limitation. This is protection.

While the patent system requires public disclosure, the Yoruba knowledge system protects through lineage, through trust, through generations of embodied practice. The knowledge does not leave the family because the family is the institution that holds it.

This is why the West ignored cassava resist. It could not be easily extracted. It could not be industrialised without the consent of the families who hold it. The technique survived not because it was documented, but because it was guarded.

The History That Was Never Written

Resist dyeing is not new to Africa. It was not imported. It was not taught by colonizers. The Yoruba people developed adire independently, using cassava starch as their resist agent of choice . The technique was practiced almost exclusively by women, who made, designed, dyed, and sold the cloth . Knowledge was passed from mother to daughter, from grandmother to granddaughter.

The first major production of adire began in the late nineteenth century . By the 1910s and 1920s, it was flourishing. Then came the disruption.

The Hostile Takeover

European traders did not bring resist dyeing to Africa. What they brought was competition—unfair competition. Companies like GB Ollivant Ltd, a Manchester-based firm, collected samples of adire cloth to study . They were not collecting out of admiration. They were collecting to replicate. They wanted to understand the patterns, the aesthetics, the market preferences so they could produce their own versions and sell them back to African consumers .

The same pattern we have seen before. Study the knowledge. Industrialize a different technique. Undermine the local producer. Capture the market.

The West knew about cassava resist. They chose not to develop it. Not because it was inferior. Because developing African knowledge would mean competing with African producers on their own terms. It was easier to industrialize wax, control the supply chain, and capture the market.

By World War II, adire production had dwindled . The colonial economy had done its work. Cheaper, faster, machine-made imitations flooded the market. The women who had spent generations perfecting the technique could not compete.

Wax became the dominant resist agent. Not because it was better. Because it was industrial. Because it was controlled by European manufacturers. Because the system was rigged.

The Environmental Cost

Wax resist dyeing is polluting. The wax must be removed from the fabric after dyeing, often using hot water and chemicals. In Thailand, where similar wax-resist techniques are used to produce batik, the wax residue clogs drainage pipes and contaminates water sources . The textile and dyeing industries release wastewater containing dye remnants and chemical substances into rivers and streams .

Cassava paste does none of this. It is made from cassava flour—a food crop. It is water-soluble. It scrapes off cleanly. It biodegrades. There is no chemical residue. There is no pipe-clogging wax. There is no pollution.

Cassava is also abundant across Africa. Nigeria is one of the world's largest producers of cassava. The raw material is already here. The knowledge is already here. The technique is already here.

So why are we not using it?

What Others Are Doing

While Africa has allowed cassava resist dyeing to remain a footnote, other nations are paying attention.

In Thailand, researchers at Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon are developing cassava starch as a substitute for fabric dye blockers and natural powder colors . They recognize the environmental damage caused by wax resists. They are looking for alternatives. They are looking at cassava.

Vietnam is also exploring the technique. The global market for sustainable textiles is growing. Consumers are demanding eco-friendly alternatives to polluting industrial processes. Cassava resist dyeing offers exactly that.

Meanwhile, on the African continent, the technique survives in pockets. Practitioners like Gasali Adeyemo, a Yoruba artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, travel internationally teaching traditional adire eleko techniques . He learned from his elders. He teaches in America. Not because he wants to leave, but because there is more demand for his knowledge outside Africa than inside it.

This is the irony. The knowledge is African. The technique is African. The material is African. But the innovation, the investment, the market development—these are happening elsewhere.

The Opportunity We Are Missing

Cassava resist dyeing could be a cornerstone of a sustainable, ecologically responsible, distinctly African textile industry. It uses local materials. It produces zero toxic waste. It generates employment for rural women who already know the technique or could be trained in it. It produces cloth that is beautiful, culturally specific, and globally marketable.

But none of this will happen without investment. Without research. Without government support. Without a conscious decision to develop the technique, scale it, and bring it to market.

The revival of adire began in the 1960s, with new patterns and new uses emerging . But revival is not enough. We need transformation.

Other countries are developing cassava-based textile technologies. If Africa does not act, the same pattern will repeat: African knowledge, developed elsewhere, patented elsewhere, sold back to Africa.

What Must Change

First, documentation. The knowledge exists in the hands of elderly practitioners and within families. It must be documented, archived, and made available for future generations—with the consent and benefit of the knowledge holders. Universities and research institutions across Africa should prioritize the study of indigenous textile techniques.

Second, research and development. Cassava paste formulations can be improved. Application methods can be mechanized. Color fastness can be enhanced. All of this requires investment in materials science and textile engineering—on African soil, with African researchers, leading the agenda.

Third, market development. Sustainable textiles are a growing global market. African cassava-resist cloth could be positioned as a premium eco-friendly product. But this requires branding, certification, supply chain development, and access to international markets.

Fourth, policy support. Governments must prioritize indigenous textile techniques in procurement, education, and industrial policy. If Nigerian schools wore uniforms made with cassava-resist cloth, the industry would have an immediate market. If public events required locally made textiles, demand would rise.

Fifth, respect for family knowledge. The families in Abeokuta who have guarded this knowledge for generations must be centered in any effort to develop the technique. Their consent, their benefit, and their leadership are non-negotiable.

Sixth, rejection of the colonial framework. We must stop treating wax as the default. We must stop treating European techniques as superior. Cassava resist is not primitive. It is not a craft to be preserved in museums. It is a technology to be developed, scaled, and owned.

The Question

I first read about cassava resist dyeing in Claire Polakoff's African Textiles and Dyeing Techniques. The book is decades old. The technique is centuries older. The West knew about it. The West chose to ignore it.

The question is not whether the knowledge exists. It does. The question is whether we will finally decide to develop what we already have.

Other countries are watching. Other countries are learning. Other countries are investing.

Cassava grows in our soil. Indigo grows in our soil. The knowledge lives in our communities and in the families who have guarded it for generations.

What are we waiting for?

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References

1. Fashioning Africa. "R6139/6 Textile; Adire." Brighton Museums, 2020. Available at: https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/fashioningafrica/objects-and-stories/object/r6139-6-textile-adire/
2. Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon. "Using cassava starch as a substitute for fabric dye blockers and natural powder colors." Green RMUTP, 2023. Available at: https://green.rmutp.ac.th/cassava-starch/
3. Penland School of Craft. "Traditional Yoruba Dyeing Techniques with Indigo." 2023. Available at: https://penland.org/class/traditional-yoruba-dyeing-techniques-with-indigo/
4. Fashioning Africa. "R6038/6 Shirt; Adire." Brighton Museums, 2019. Available at: https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/fashioningafrica/objects-and-stories/object/r6038-6-shirt-adire/
5. The Centenary Project. "Adire: The Art of Tie and Dye." Google Arts & Culture. Available at: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/adire-the-art-of-tie-and-dye/8gXxRjT3ZkRUKg
6. Cornell University Library. "Inspiration: Resist Dyeing." Fashion & Feathers Exhibit. Available at: https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/fashion/exhibition/inspiration/
7. KOTITI Testing & Research Institute. "Resist dye patterning." Textile Information, 2002. Available at: https://www.kotiti.or.jp/eng/publication/backnumber/2002/12/
8. Lancashire Textile Gallery. "Sample of Nigerian adire resist dyeing with fish and chevron pattern." 2023. Available at: https://lancashiretextilegallery.org/adire-fish-chevron
9. Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. "Wrapper (Adire)." Object 96-1-17. Available at: https://africa.si.edu/collections/view/objects/asitem/items@11222
10. Nigerian textile practitioner account. "Adire Eleko: The Family Art of Abeokuta." (Source as provided)
11. Polakoff, Claire. African Textiles and Dyeing Techniques. (Original source)

Introduction: The Problem with "Tradition"

When visitors to Curaçao admire the vibrant saya ku djèki during the Seú parade, or when cultural festivals showcase women in elaborate headwraps and men in cream-colored shirts, these garments are presented as timeless expressions of Curaçaoan identity. They are called "traditional dress."

But this label obscures a more uncomfortable truth. What we celebrate as cultural heritage was born from the bodies of taken African people—men and women torn from their homelands, forced into the holds of Dutch slave ships, and deposited on an island where they would be required to rebuild identity from fragments. This essay interrogates, through a critical design lens, how the experience of enslaved Africans—their trauma, their memory, their creativity—shaped what became Curaçao's traditional clothing. It asks a fundamental question: Is this tradition, or is this necessity—preserved, polished, and rebranded over generations?

The garments now called "traditional" were not designed in freedom. They were assembled from the materials of oppression: the cargo lists of Dutch merchants, the coarse fabric issued to laborers, the empty flour sacks of impoverished families, and the starch of a cassava root grown on land they did not own.

Yet there is something more at work here—something that resists simple explanations of material scarcity. The saya ku djèki—that distinctive combination of wide skirt and fitted top—is not unique to Curaçao. Travel across the Black diaspora, and you will find its echoes everywhere. In Brazil, the baiana dress of Salvador's Carnival carries the same volumetric skirt and elaborate headwrap. In Colombia's Palenque, in the pollera of Panama, in the bata of Cuba's Santería practitioners, in the nagua of Venezuela's Afro-descendant communities, the same silhouette appears and reappears. It emerges in the quadrille dress of Haiti and the douillette of Martinique. The forms are not identical—each carries the imprint of its specific colonial power, its local materials, its particular history—but the family resemblance is undeniable.

What are we to make of this? The connections are not always scientifically traceable. There is no single shipping manifest documenting the movement of a skirt pattern, no colonial decree that mandated this particular silhouette across Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies. And yet the form persists—a deep structure carried in memory, in muscle, in the hands of women who taught their daughters to sew as their mothers had taught them. It suggests that taken African people, dispersed across the Americas, developed similar aesthetic solutions to similar problems: how to dress modestly under the gaze of oppressors, how to preserve dignity through fabric, how to signal identity through silhouette.

This opening observation—that the saya ku djèki belongs to a pan-Afro-diasporic family of dress—points toward research still to be done. If the same form appears in Curaçao and Brazil, in Cuba and Colombia, what does that tell us about the deep connections that survived the Middle Passage? What knowledge traveled not in books but in bodies, not in patterns but in memory? This essay focuses on Curaçao as a case study, but the questions it raises ripple outward, inviting future scholars to trace the threads that bind the Black Americas together.

Part I: The Raw Materials of Oppression – Textiles in the Slave Era

Before there could be a saya ku djèki, there had to be fabric. And in 17th and 18th century Curaçao, fabric arrived not for the comfort of the enslaved, but for the profit of the enslaver. The very fibers that would eventually become "traditional dress" first touched the island as cargo—listed in ledgers, exchanged for human beings, and distributed according to the logic of empire.

The Dutch Textile Machine

The Dutch were master textile traders. Through the Dutch East India Company (VOC), they flooded the Atlantic world with Indian cottons—calicoes, chintzes, and the distinctive plaid Madras cloth. By the 1600s, these fabrics were reaching Curaçao, but their journey tells us everything about the broken connection this essay traces. These textiles arrived not as goods for the enslaved to wear with pride, but as:

· Currency in the slave trade, exchanged for human beings on the African coast

· Cargo to be re-exported to Spanish colonies

· Payment for plantation infrastructure

· Clothing issued to enslaved laborers at the lowest possible cost

Madras cloth, now celebrated as a symbol of Afro-Caribbean identity, arrived as a commodity of empire. Its transformation into a marker of resistance and belonging happened despite its origins, not because of them. The same fabric that wrapped African bodies in the hold of a slave ship would later wrap the heads of their descendants in ceremonies of freedom. The connection between origin and meaning is not just broken—it is violently severed and painstakingly repaired by generations of women who refused to let the cloth carry only the story of their oppression.

The Paradox of Trade Cloth

This paradox deserves attention. The Dutch did not import Madras cloth for enslaved people. They imported it as trade goods—to be sold, bartered, and exchanged along the West African coast for more human cargo. That some of these textiles eventually reached the hands of enslaved people in Curaçao was incidental to their purpose. They were not gifts; they were the loose change of a brutal economy.

And yet, once in those hands, the cloth was transformed. A length of Madras—called injiri or 'George' by the Kalabari people of Nigeria, who had worn it for centuries before the slave trade—might be woven in South India, shipped by Dutch merchants to the West African coast, and exchanged for enslaved human beings. That same cloth, carried across the Middle Passage in memory as much as in baggage, might end its journey as a headwrap in Curaçao—wrapped in a style that remembered Africa, worn with a dignity the Dutch never intended. The cloth carried the violence of its journey, but it also carried possibility. This is the broken connection made visible: the same object can contain both trauma and resilience, both theft and creation.

Clothing the Enslaved: The Bare Minimum

When enslaved people were given clothing—and the word "given" itself is a deception, for nothing was given that their labor did not purchase many times over—it was not an act of kindness but of economic calculation. Coarse, cheap fabrics were imported specifically to outfit laborers at the lowest possible cost. These included:

· Osnaburg: a rough linen named for the German city where it was produced, stiff and uncomfortable against skin

· Low-grade cotton: often unbleached, undyed, and quickly worn thin

· Heavy wool: entirely unsuited to the tropical climate, likely issued because it was cheap, not because it was appropriate

These were the textiles of subsistence. They were designed for durability, not dignity; for covering, not expression. The Dutch were not interested in whether enslaved people felt human in their clothing. They were interested in whether the clothing would last another season before requiring replacement.

And yet—and this is the central tension of this entire study—even these scant materials became sites of meaning. As scholarship on Curaçaoan women documents, enslaved women took the rough fabric they were issued and made something more of it. They did not simply wear what they were given; they transformed it.

The Headwrap: Memory in Cloth

Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in the headwrap. The styles documented at Landhuis Chobolobo—Punta di Skálo with its supportive knot for carrying buckets, Pèchi Yaya for special occasions—are not European inventions. They are direct lines back to the African continent, preserved through the Middle Passage, adapted to new materials and new circumstances.

The headwrap tells us something crucial about how taken African people approached cloth. When they received coarse osnaburg or cheap cotton, they did not see only what the Dutch intended. They saw possibility. They saw memory. They saw a way to continue, in a new land, practices their mothers had taught them. The cloth may have been European, but the meaning was African.

This is an early act of what we might call design resistance: the refusal to let material be merely material, the insistence on imprinting identity onto even the most meager resources. The headwrap is not just a piece of fabric wrapped around hair. It is a repository of memory, a marker of occasion, a tool for labor, and a statement of selfhood—all at once.

The Connection That Was Never Supposed to Survive

The Dutch textile machine was designed to move goods and people as efficiently as possible. It was not designed to preserve African aesthetics or enable cultural continuity. And yet, despite every effort to strip enslaved people of their identities, the knowledge of how to wrap a head, how to style fabric, how to make cloth carry meaning—this knowledge survived.

It survived in the hands of women. It survived in the whispered instructions from mother to daughter. It survived in the muscle memory of fingers folding and tucking fabric. It survived because taken African people refused to let it die.

The connection was broken, yes—violently, deliberately, systematically broken. But it was also repaired, stitch by stitch, wrap by wrap, generation by generation. The saya ku djèki and the headwraps of Curaçao are not simply "traditional dress." They are the material evidence of that repair.

Looking Ahead

This chapter has traced the raw materials of oppression—the fabrics that arrived in Curaçao as cargo and currency. But materials alone do not make clothing. The next chapter examines how taken African people, particularly women, transformed these materials into the garments we now call traditional. It asks: When you are given nothing but coarse cloth and memory, what do you make? The answer is the saya ku djèki.

Part II: The Saya ku Djèki – Whose Design, Whose Modesty?

The saya ku djèki—a long skirt paired with a flared, button-up shirt—is today's iconic Curaçaoan women's outfit. It is described as modest, practical, and beautiful. But a persistent narrative lingers in some histories: that this modesty was imposed upon enslaved and freed women by the wives of slave masters, who, threatened by the presence of Black women in their households, sought to cover them according to European Victorian standards.

This explanation is too simple. More importantly, it is an explanation that erases agency. It assumes that Black women were passive recipients of dress codes rather than active participants in their own self-fashioning. The scholarship on dress in the Caribbean tells a different story—one in which African women retained, nurtured, and adapted their own aesthetic traditions, making conscious choices about when to resist and when to accommodate.

The Narrative We Must Challenge

The claim that slave masters' wives imposed modesty on enslaved women rests on a plausible premise: that white women in colonial households felt threatened by the presence of Black women and sought to control their appearance. This may well have happened. But to conclude from this that the saya ku djèki is simply a hand-me-down of Victorian modesty is to ignore everything we know about how enslaved women actually used dress.

If modesty were purely an imposition, we would expect to find records of enslaved women passively accepting whatever clothing was given to them. Instead, the historical record shows the opposite. Enslaved women exercised significant control over their clothing, using it as a symbol of resistance against European attempts at cultural annihilation. They maintained and nurtured African cultural characteristics in their dress, preserving aesthetic values that had nothing to do with Victorian morality.

What the Scholarship Actually Shows

Steeve Buckridge's foundational work on Jamaican women's dress documents that African cultural features—folklore, music, language, religion, and dress—were retained and nurtured in the Caribbean because they guaranteed the survival of Africans and their descendants. Dress was not a passive accommodation to white expectations; it was an active strategy of survival. Women had some control over their clothing whether as resistors or accommodators. The key word here is control.

When European elements did appear in enslaved women's dress, Buckridge argues, this was not simply imposition. Changes from more African modes to more European-influenced styles accompanied greater possibilities for social mobility. Women made calculated choices: adopting certain European elements could open doors, but this was a strategy, not submission. As Buckridge puts it, resistance and accommodation were not polar opposites, but melded into each other.

The Evidence of Colonial Fear

If slave masters' wives were so successful at imposing modesty, why did colonial authorities feel the need to pass laws controlling what enslaved women wore? Charlotte Hammond's research on the francophone Caribbean documents that dress was so powerful a form of expression that it stirred the colonists to restrain this seemingly dangerous form of slave ascension through legislative prohibition. These ordinances policed the way certain bodies could be attired precisely because enslaved women were dressing in ways the colonizers found threatening, not compliant.

The existence of these laws tells us everything: enslaved women were not passively accepting the dress codes of their oppressors. They were actively using clothing to assert themselves, and the colonial state had to intervene to stop them.

The Evidence of Creativity

Perhaps most powerfully, Danielle Skeehan's work reveals that enslaved women used clothing as a medium of authorship. She documents the case of Coobah, an enslaved seamstress in Jamaica, who embroidered names and messages onto another woman's smock—creating what Skeehan calls a "material epistle" that circulated publicly on the wearer's body. This was not passive acceptance of imposed modesty. This was a woman using needle and thread to "write" her own stories of love and kinship, to assert her own voice in a world that denied her literacy.

As Skeehan argues, these material texts complicate our understanding of who counts as an "author" in the Atlantic world. Enslaved women converted the very tools of her labor as an enslaved seamstress into a medium through which she can tell stories of love and kinship, as well as sexual exploitation and loss.

The Question of African Aesthetics

If the saya ku djèki is not simply an imposed Victorian garment, what are its sources? The scholarship points to African aesthetic values that survived the Middle Passage. Buckridge discusses the aesthetic value of West African women's dress and the African customs that were brought to Jamaica and nurtured across generations. The headwrap traditions documented in Curaçao—Punta di Skálo and Pèchi Yaya—are explicitly linked to African origins. Why would headwraps retain their African connections while the saya ku djèki did not?

The answer is that both retain African aesthetic sensibilities, adapted to new materials and circumstances. The wide skirt and fitted top silhouette that appears across the Black diaspora—from Brazil's baiana to Cuba's bata to Curaçao's saya ku djèki—suggests deep structural continuities that cannot be explained by European influence alone.

Revisiting the Chobolobo Timeline

The Chobolobo source states that traditional clothing started after the slavery times with our ancestors. This timing is significant, but not for the reasons usually given. After 1863, formerly enslaved women were free—but they were also poor. Their clothing had to serve multiple purposes: affordable, durable, appropriate for labor.

But this does not mean they simply adopted whatever styles were available. As Buckridge's work shows, even in freedom, women continued to make choices about their dress that reflected both African heritage and strategic accommodation to new social realities. The saya ku djèki was often made from the same fabric or a combination of two or three patterns. This pattern-mixing was not merely economical; it was a continuation of African aesthetic practices that valued pattern and texture.

Conclusion: Whose Modesty?

So, whose modesty does the saya ku djèki represent?

The evidence suggests that the question itself may be wrong. The garment does not represent someone else's modesty imposed upon Black women. It represents the choices of Black women themselves—choices made within constraints, yes, but choices nonetheless. They chose when to retain African modes and when to adopt European elements. They chose how to wrap their heads and how to mix their patterns. They chose, like Coobah, to use needle and thread to tell their own stories.

The modesty of the saya ku djèki may have less to do with Victorian morality and more to do with African values of dignity, self-presentation, and community. It may reflect what it meant for a woman to present herself with respect in a world that denied her respect at every turn.

The question lingers, but the scholarship shifts its terms. It is no longer: "Did white women impose this on Black women?" It becomes: "What did Black women make of the materials they had, and what stories did they tell through the clothes they made?"

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📚 References for Post 1 (Introduction, Parts I & II)

Becker, Jill. (2013). Cassava Resist Dyeing: Traditional dyeing techniques in a new environment. Paper presented at the Biennial Conference of The University of the West Indies Schools of Education, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.

Buckridge, Steeve O. The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1750-1890. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2004.

Buckridge, Steeve O. "Dem caa dress yah!" : dress as resistance and accommodation among Jamaican women from slavery to freedom, 1760-1890. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 1998.

Buckridge, Steeve O. African Lace-Bark in the Caribbean: The Construction of Race, Class, and Gender. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Contiguous Cloth: Textiles and the Slave Trade in New Netherland. The Gotham Center for New York City History.

Curaçaoan Women in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. Brill Publishing.

Design History In Curaçao. Design Encyclopedia.

Hammond, Charlotte. "Costuming Colonial Resistance in the New World." In Entangled Otherness: Cross-gender Fabrications in the Francophone Caribbean, 48-81. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018.

Indian Cotton Textiles in the 18th-Century Atlantic Economy. LSE Research.

Madras and the Poetics of Sartorial Resistance. Age of Revolutions.

Skeehan, Danielle C. "Materializing the Black Atlantic: African Captives, Caribbean Slaves, and Creole Fashioning." In The Fabric of Empire: Material and Literary Cultures of the Global Atlantic, 1650-1850. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

Systad, Gunnhild. (2020). The Use of Flour and Sugar Sacks in Clothing, Bedding, and More. Norwegian Textile Letter.

Textile Circulation in the Dutch Global Market. Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (JHNA).

The Story Behind the Traditional Clothing of Curaçao. Landhuis Chobolobo.

Utilization and Characterization of Cassava Starch as a Natural Thickening Agent for Reactive Dye Printing on Cotton Fabric. ResearchGate.

White Gold: Cassava as an Industrial Base. Scientific Research Publishing.

How to Make Laundry Starch from Cassava. Starch Project Solution / Doing Group.

The African continent has a rich and wide textile practice spanning since the beginning of times. Hook based textile practices was also part of this rich heritage. It is therefore no mystery, that the craft of Crochet has become very popular in contemporary African nations. This popularity, however, exists within a paradox: many contemporary African practitioners understand crochet as a European import, severed from knowledge that their own continent possesses millennia-deep traditions of hook-based fiber manipulation.

Early ancient hooks were found, possible a crochet hook in ancient excavated site of Karanis in Egypt.

"Karanis; Crochet Hook (?); Bone (Unidentified)." In the digital collection Kelsey Museum of Archaeology Art & Artifact Collection. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/k/kelsey/x-0000.02.1769/7_2527p02. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 19, 2026.

This bone implement, housed at the University of Michigan, is one of several such tools recovered from Egyptian excavations. Implements from Karanis confirm that the technological principle of manipulating fiber with a hook was understood and practiced in ancient Africa. The tools are fashioned from materials that would have been readily available—bone, wood, ivory—suggesting that the technology was neither rare nor imported, but indigenous and established. While Eurocentric scholarship often defaults to cautious language ("possible crochet hook"), the evidence speaks for itself.

The Ancient Chebka Lace, needle-knotted stitch is a close relative to the filet crochet. Initially practiced in Tunisia, it was used to create geometric bands, while the filet crochet techniques allows you to create complete projects including vests or table wear.

Ref: https://coutaubegarie.com/lot/157092/26525906-three-entre-deux-and-one-carre-in-chebka-lace-north-africa

Chebka was first practiced by individual women in Tunisia to adorn their traditional garments. The technique later spread to Algeria and Morocco, where it remained in use. Its geometric patterns reflect design languages common across North Africa, developed entirely independently of European influence. The structure is identical in principle to filet crochet's netted grounds, but Chebka predates the European systematization of filet crochet by centuries. It represents an African solution to creating decorative net-like grids.

Under the disguise of atrocities committed in the name of benevolent missionary works, Nuns used textile practices to gain access to vulnerable communities, where they taught practices that were stolen from African nations and re-packaged and re-introduced as another way to further penetrate our communities.

The white nuns teaching "Western European embroidery and lace techniques to local girls. A practice continued under NGO's

Source: https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/regional-traditions/middle-east-and-north-africa/pre-modern-middle-east-and-north-africa/embroidery-and-the-white-sisters

The photograph shows White Sisters in what is now Burkina Faso, circa 1930, instructing local girls in techniques presented as "Western European embroidery and lace." Yet Chebka lace, which these same nuns would have taught in North African missions, was not European at all. It was North African. The pattern is consistent: African techniques were extracted, stripped of their origin, and then taught back to Africans as European knowledge. This was not cultural exchange. It was cultural erasure. Nuns gained access to vulnerable communities by offering textile instruction, while simultaneously dismantling the very traditions that had produced those techniques. The goal was not education but domination—spiritual, cultural, and economic.

The knotless Netting is a material example of another African nations, Cameroon, Indigenous hook based textile technique. This netting sack called Nkekelewe, comes from the Mafa people in Cameroon. It is made using a knotless netting technique.

Source: https://portal.hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/catalog/93f3405f-1823-4a24-886c-80c524a1eb60

The Mafa sack was collected in 1965 by Paul Hinderling and donated to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum at Berkeley. It is made from bean fiber cordage, materials that would have been locally available. The object is catalogued with the technique explicitly identified: knotless netting. This is not a guess. It is documentation.

Ref: https://collections.rom.on.ca/objects/527320/adult-sock

The knotless netting technique is being made using bean fiber cordage. It is not a colonial-era introduction, it is an indigenous Cameroonian object that was collected in 1965, representing a longstanding local practice that survived despite colonial violence.

The Mafa knotless Netting technique predates knitting and crochet, with the oldest known fragments dating to c. 6500 BCE from the Judean Desert. Knotless netting, technically termed nålbinding, is an ancient technique whereby a single needle creates fabric through a series of loops and passes. The same technique appears in Egypt in the form of Coptic socks from the 4th to 7th centuries CE. The Royal Ontario Museum holds multiple examples (910.130.143, G1281). The National Museums Scotland holds a divided-toe sock from Akhmim (A.1911.315). The Petrie Museum houses a pair excavated from Hawara (UC16766). All are made using nålbinding—knotless netting—the same technique the Mafa people used to make their sack. European crochet, as codified in the nineteenth century, is a latecomer to a technological family Africa had already mastered.

Ref.: https://www.nms.ac.uk/search-our-collections/collection-search-results?entry=404856

This is not coincidence. It is continuity. The technology existed in Africa for thousands of years before European crochet was systematized. When Europeans claim crochet as their invention, they erase this history.

The future of African Hook textile practices

You don't have to go too far on TikTok to find a large community of Africans practicing the craft of Crochet. They hail from all the African nations. They create amazing looking designs, largely inspired by European aesthetics. It could be that these young and older practitioners were introduced to this technique from a European perspective, not knowing that their continent has a long established legacy with hook based textile practices.

That is why, it is important that Timbuktu research and design emphasise the rich textile heritage and practices in pre-colonial Africa.

The colonial project did not just steal land and resources. It stole knowledge and then sold it back. It taught us to look to Europe for validation, to value European techniques over our own. The result is a generation of African creators who can produce stunning crochet work but have never seen a Mafa netting sack or a Coptic sock or a piece of Chebka lace. They do not know that their ancestors were doing this work. Practitioners are introduced to crochet through patterns and tutorials presenting it as a Western craft. They are not shown the evidence. They inherit a severed history.

While the contemporary practice of Crochet and Hand knitting might differ from ancient practices, we uphold the fact that practices, like cultures, evolved. The African hook textile practices with practice changes and includes new techniques making it not far fetched to claim also crochet as emerging from African practices.

We do not need to prove that ancient Africans did exactly what European crocheters do today. That is not how culture works. We need to show that the technology—manipulating fiber with a hook to create fabric—was present in Africa for millennia. We need to show that African women were creating openwork textiles with needles and hooks before European contact. We need to show that when colonial nuns arrived to "teach" lacemaking, they were often teaching techniques that originated in Africa. The claim that crochet emerges legitimately from African technological traditions is not sentimental—it is factual.

An academic study by Vivian Korankye at the Takoradi Technical University, demonstrate that we seek to investigate how our heritage practices can inform our future contemporary practices. Vivian investigates techniques for innovating indigenous vegetable-tanned leather into yarn.

Manipulating Indigenous Vegetable-Tanned Leather for Use in Crocheting Art

The study explores techniques and methods used in converting indigenous vegetable-tanned leather into yarns that can serve as an alternative material and convert the locally made yarns into crocheted ladies containers and footwear using different stitches.

Ref: https://www.prophy.ai/article/169067466-Manipulating-Indigenous-Vegetable-Tanned-Leather-for-Use-in-Crocheting-Art/

The study employed a qualitative methodology combining descriptive and studio-based approaches, sampling crochet artisans, leatherwork teachers, and leather technologists. The study concludes that indigenous vegetable-tanned leather is suitable for use in making crocheting yarns due to its strength, flexibility, and suitability for hook construction. Spiral cutting techniques emerged as the most appropriate method for cutting leather into yarns, with recommended processing steps including cutting, softening through wet pounding, and dyeing using vat or mixed dye methods.

This research matters because it starts from African material and African technique. It does not ask permission from European tradition. It does not seek validation from European institutions. It simply works with what is here—leather tanned using indigenous methods, yarns produced by African hands, crochet hooks held by African fingers. It takes an African material and applies African research to develop contemporary applications. It is a continuation of the same technological tradition that produced the Mafa sack and the Coptic socks and Chebka lace.

Conclusion

The evidence is not ambiguous. Bone tools from Karanis. Chebka lace from Tunisia. Knotless netting from Cameroon. Coptic socks from Egypt. Hook-based textile practices constitute an authentic and enduring dimension of Africa's material culture, dating back millennia. Colonialism disrupted this heritage, stole credit for it, and repackaged it as European charity. But the techniques survived, and the knowledge persists.

The work now is to remember. To recover. To refuse the colonial narrative that taught us to forget.

“African solutions for the African peoples”

This has become a popular slogan among African people around the world. But what would it really entail and how would we go about creating African solutions in a Global mindset?

For the past 20 years the conversations intensified around Decolonisation and Decoloniality. African and Caribbean nations heighten their need to have the conversations transformed into actions, yet the larger sentiment of fear was holding us back. 

Not necessarily the fear of change, but rather the fear of failure. Who was going to chance their life’s into implementing long held sentiments, with millions of the fate of their people in their hands. It is never a small task. The risk not only for livelihood, but a change that could cost you your life. 

With so many external stakeholders subverting advancements of the African to force status quo multi level strategies implementation could usher in some impact for a long-term approach.   

Fabric remains found on the continent, dates back at least to the 10th century, some even earlier. We know of all the major and minor empires that existed in ancient times. The intricacy of the textiles found were so particular that it needed to be studied to be able to be recreated. And even as it was recreated, its essence, the ideas and philosophies that inspired the designed were never captured. 

They were relegated to geometrical understandings and mathematical content excluding the connectivity of these textiles. European taught seeks to extrapolate, take apart and keep apart, then assembly in a foreign context. Whereas the African Heritage textiles produced by the many nations were visualising each peoples paragons, communicated and express principles.

These textiles were produced in a system, a process, a collaboration of many knowledges coming together to manufacture covers suitable for our skin and the environments we were living in with the richly available resources.

An intact heritage would inspire designs to flow from it. Engineers and creative practitioners would be inspired and embolden by the visual availability of artefacts that was produced by predecessors informed by their lands, climates, languages and cultures. 

For Africans that were colonised and displaced, having their narratives interpreted and presented as factual by colonists and enslavers, the linear development of its society permanently derailed. The process of restoration could never exclude our forced interactions and subjections, except we actively counter the misrepresentations in all areas, disband them and decolonises first and foremost.

Ground work has to be done to address inaccuracies in the Heritage management stage to better inform the future and continuations of textile design and productions whit-in Africa and the Caribbean.

We would be in a unique position to learn from all tried and tested strategies, examine them to inform our own robust strategies. Strategies and approaches that evolved from a variety of sources including referencing our own sources can be transformed to innovate textile knowledge systems unique to the African continent. 

Frameworks and Methodologies designed to solve our particular circumstances should be explored and even encouraged. Such Frameworks and Methodologies would adjust the African continents trajectory in Textile manufacturing and Design, making Africa’s design solutions sufficiently unique to recapture local markets while recuperate its position on Global scale. 

“….al human beings need development in order to live well. Intended developments must be people-centered, people-intended and people oriented. (Nkwazi Mhango, 2018, P13, Development Naivety and Emergent Insecurities in a Monopolised World).

The African peoples can not afford a development with post-humanism practices at its heart. Our interconnectivity to our land, languages and humanity practices does not support a space where human beings take a back space, it is not African taught. 

In Maendeleo philosophy, the ability to bring development to ones home area provided a way of shoring up legitimacy, it must be a responsible one based on the consent and needs of its stakeholders . (Nkwazi Mhango, 2018, P14, Development Naivety and Emergent Insecurities in a Monopolised World).

And these sentiments can be uphold by developing solutions that perhaps other countries do not have. The dynamics from North, East, West and South of Africa differ yet the result of the impact was the same. The factors that were implemented were largely the same and were able to be applied with the same result around the continent, so will be the solutions. 

The initiation of change starts with our Heritage management, giving it a new space in our societies. Our heritage and the outcome of the analysis of the artefacts based on the owners interpretations would then inspire new design frameworks and methodologies, leading to unique design outcomes specific to the various African nations.

We need to formulate key questions, Identify continually the problems affecting us and actively solve them. Adjusting our practices and Praxis as required in a flexible manner would allow us more room to make the moves necessary for a new textile industry in Africa.  

Intra-Africa exchanges could contribute to the early growth of many clothing manufacturing as governments adjust their policies to the peoples requests and requirements.  

The traditional textile processes will prove to be having lower accessibility issues then the automated expensive machines yet it can be more time consuming to bring the end product to market. The larger textile industry developments would not have to rely on a single strategy for its deployment, rather the amalgamation of strategies cantered around African taught would usher in the new era of the Africans. 

In order for the textile industry on the African continent to become prosporoues, the handcrafted textiles and the machine produced textiles, we have to bring something unique to the table that is not already here. The main disadvantage we currently have on the continent is the many external nations that have had, and continue to have, a long history in exploiting and looting the continent, a history of re-writting the African stories and appropiating indigenous African designs as their own.

The reclamation of our legacy: The main Phase

This phase has been developing since the declarations of 'indepence' from African nations from 1950's onward. While it had its growing pains, the process of reclamation of our ancestral legacy is desicive, driven by our strong heritage of identity and our strong will to counter historical and future erasure. We demanded the return of the remains of our fathers and mothers that were used as either throphies of battles, 'medical' studies or displayed in zoo's and museums to be gauged at and rediculed. We demanded the return of all our ancestral artifacts that were stolen, alongside recognation of our ancestors legacy. It was an upward battle for black people around the world to counter the mis-education that we inherited from the educational system that we went through which was designed to maintain and sustain a lie designed to oppress the African people around the globe.

We have had many academics that were ignored, discredited and rediculed for their knowledge of African history and African ideologies. Their work was never recognized or actively censored in a system where knowledge had to be filtered through european taught. These academics remained standfast in their arguments and left us with a trail and a body of investigative work that we can use today to further connect the knowledges we once possessed. It is this reconnection, that will pass through our current practices, allowing us to design and produce exceptional products and unique design aestetics for current and future markets.

The Economy of design

' Looking back enables looking foreward.'

The global product trade is driven by designs. Aesthetic design, problem solving designs, ecological design, sustainable design and luxury designs, solving design and product demands that were created through colonization and force.

The values and ideologies of these products does not necessarily represents real solutions for our continent. Some 'solutions' are gateways to bigger problems. Many designs are created to suit the culture, they adress specifically a conteporary solution to a cultural question. Hence you will find for example products in Indonesia and Malaysia that are not suitable for the european market, not because the product is not beautiful and 'modern', but because its specific use addresses a cultural practise that you will not find in Europe, or you will not find sufficiently in Europe to sustain mass imports of that product. It is not economically viable.

Due to enslavement, colonization and brutal force, Europeans saught to tranform certain aspect of our culture in order to secure economic benefits for their businesses.

Contrary to popular knowledge, resist dye was not a new phenomenon to the continent. It was another of the many textile practices that African textile practitioners practiced. It might not of been practiced throughout the continent, but there is clear evidence of resist dying of African traditional textiles, that today is done using wax, but was practised prior using Kasava paste. 

Further research has to be conducted in how this traditional practise can be revived on the continent to avoid environmental problems similarly experienced by other countries. It does not have to be part of our growing processes.

Instead of innovations around further development of the kassave paste as a sustainable and ecological product to use in textile dying, an industry plaqued by poluting its surroundings, a harsher material for the environment, wax, was / is used. It was an existing technique that Europeans were able to trade in, they did not bring the technique to the continent, they first destroyed Africa's textile industry and inserted themselves in it. It was an hostile takeover.

Kassava is a product consumed all over Africa, its biggest producers are African nations such as Nigeria. Devising methods from which resist dye can be used, would not only put made in Africa products on the market but would avoid high cost of import and it would be a product easily available in case of any logistic disturbances. 

Having design solutions that caters to the local culture allows for innovations whitin the culture. This not only contributes to the preservations of the culture but also allows for culture continuation practices in contemporaty settings.

Where traditionally, African artisans and craftmans were hightly valued and respected, changed during the periods of colonizations. Parents only encourages their childrens to pursuit professions such as doctors, lawyers and politicians where the income is perceived as being more secured.  Childrens were sent abroad to Europe and America to study at prestigious schools to only see how the Europeans and Americans value and incorporate their heritage into their daily lifes.

What was described as old on the African continent was placed behind thick secured glass in expensive luxury buildings called museums in Europe. It is alongside this that Africans abroad re-discovered the true value of their culture and perceived how their ancestral artifacts were informing the Europeans and Americans innovations and future develpments. This revelation now provided Africans abroad with the courage neccessary to reclaim their heritage and develop this for their own countries futures. Today you will find South-Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and other African Nations being powerhouses where it comes to innovative fashion design inspired by their own traditions. Textiles and cloths are being innovated by Africans for Africans. African designers are learning about their ancestral practices and combine this with their contemporary design knowledge producing beautiful aestetics, unique to the African continent.

African Design Thinking

Design Innovations informed by traditions, translated and transfered by African designers

African designers have long been under-estimated and neglected, by not only the international community but also by our own societies. Their designs always adressed solutions for the societies that they are part of but more often then not they are overseen in projects where they can be of signigicant impact for the local culture. Like with many aspects of life, it was the European taught and aestetics that was taking presidence over our own, hence African designers inital focus to be recognized in their field is to produce European focused designs. Most of our important artifacts were taken abroad making it inaccessible to children growing up to learn about them in the midst of a European centered curriculum. But children that were sent broad for studies observed how 'old, insignifican, non-existing, backward' objects were taken special spaces in the colonizers communities. They came to understand how their histories was informing their oppressors future and dominance.

During the years 2021/ 22, I was able to take a life changing journey through 11 African countries. I was able to make valuable observations that would enable me to formulate methodologies, methods and research directions altering the ways the traditional textile designs and practitioners are being affected throughout the African continent.

The Traditional textiles and the people making them are not a very visible part of the contemporary textile industry.  You have to ask the right persons (Find the right people to ask).

You might then be able to be brought to remote places where a person might still be practicing the textile craft on the traditional loom.

During my drive I observed a mixed crowd wearing both European style clothing and Wax printed fabrics. It was rare, ver rare if ever I observed the traditional local textiles.

The roads in Africa are great, where there are patches of bad road, consorted efforts are being made to improve these. Large trucks drive throughout the continent taking goods from country to country, city to city.

Mali and Burkina Faso are countries very strong in their cultures. People there are very proud of their cultures and they incorporate traditions in contemporary settings.

Artisans have their shops throughout the cities of the country. In Burkina Faso for example I was able to visit a business centre where people from various African countries came to display their products.

On this particular day products from Morroco were the dominant products on display, as Morroco invest in Moroccan businesses to push their products on the continent. I would like to see more African nations promoting their local products in eachothers countries. There was no textiles from any country here.

My journey took me further through Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Tchad, Cameroon, CAR and eventually Republic of Congo.

As I was waiting for my Visa in Brazaville, I decided to explore the traditional Congolese textiles. During my visit to the cities large market of Poto Poto, I came across a Malian ran textile shop among the many Indian ran shops on the high street.

As I was asking for for the Congolese traditional headwraps, my eyes were drawn  to a striped heavy cotton quality worn 20-25 cm stripe cloth. I knew immediately I stroke gold.

Before this, I was contemplating the lack of intercontinental trade, which would greatly boost the textile sector if these could be exported among the African countries.

My beautiful Burkinabe made textile, was 10x more expensive than the average textiles in that store. The shop owner explained to me that transportation, from Mali to Congo, was a large part for the high cost of the cloth. Employing a tailor, with experience in pattern cutting with strip fabrics was also a challenge.  There is definitely space for specialised  knowledge creation in design and pattern cutting using traditional textiles.

The cloth was beautifully hand woven, striking colour combinations allowing me to create a beautiful long dress.

I knew, based on the weaving patterns, that the artisan used years of passed on knowledge to construct this cloth.

Design analysis

The warp colours of this textile are yellow, black and orange.  The weft is all black. The pattern sequence is constructed with a variety thicknesses of vertical lines of black, yellow and orange sitting perfectly on the weft.

The length of the textile is about 100cm, and the width was 15 inch. This would be in keeping with the use of the traditional handloom. This does not mean that larger looms looms are not also part of an older traditions of weavers in this region. This however not been investigated as of yet. But what is certain is that the yarn used in this piece are not hand spun yarn but mechanically produced yarn.

I can not state for sure that the yarn would of been imported into Mali, as Mali is a large  cotton producer and has been making consorted efforts in rebuilding all parts of its textile industry while preserving its traditional artisan textile sector.

Having had the opportunity to speak to the seller/ owner at length, I was informed that these textiles are very much loved but for the prices. The cheap imports place a role, but also the transportation and import duties make the selling prices 10x higher.

Nevertheless there is still a niche market for these fabrics and in time, with further developments of trade among the African nations, in combination with effective government policies, the prices might eventually come down.