Tag: Governance

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.

In 2015, surfaced the first signs out of the African continent that the governments are starting to make and implement the necessary policies in order to safeguard not only the livelihoods of local textile practitioners, but also the preservation of local designs and aesthetics alongside the weaving skills.

While there has been numerous African scholarly attention on own decline of the local textile industry, it has taken over 20 years to arrive at a point where local governments are active in the sector.

Each of the 54 countries in Africa, can boast of a rich ancient tradition of cloth making, dating far back in the BC's. Some textile designs have risen more in popularity than others, and some has been more researched and documented then others.

In 2019, the Rwanda president took a brave and bold step in halting second-hand clothing shipping containers that were arriving from America and Europe. These second-hand clothing (and cheap Chinese knock-off  prints) were decimating the remaining textile practitioners chances of making some type of livelihood for them and their families.

These imports do not just affect one  of people, but many segments and supporting Textile industry practitioners as illustrated in the graph.

With the Rwandan government interventions they were able to start the arduous task of rebuilding a prosperous industry,  manufacturing industry in the Pearl of Africa.

In 2022, the Kenyan government started taking steps to protect the local textile industry from second-hand clothing imports and cheap Chinese faux prints fabrics.

Along side these policies, concerted efforts are being made by locally run NGO's to reintroduce weaving and other textile making skills back into the workforce.

Ghana in 2021 mandated that the school uniforms should have traditional Ghanaian designs. This policy does not only imparts identity back into the populous, but it also help boost the local manufacturing mills that will now be producing and selling throughout the country, regaining portions of the local market segments.

With the new governing system in Burkina Faso, the government, as one of their first policies, also made the school uniforms to be changed into local traditional designs. These policy changes strongly boost the Burkinabe identity and increase jobs locally.

The textile industry in Burkina Faso has long been suffering,  but was able to still continue to exist with small export opportunities in Central Africa.

Ethiopia has long maintained its textile industry despite other African countries struggles. The famous white cotton woven fabric with beautiful colourful surface needle work has been exported worldwide as Ethiopians promote their cultures worldwide.

Ethiopians themselves are large consumers of their own cloth in so sharing in the continuity of textile practitioners livelihood and its technical making skills.

In Nigeria, the Yoruba, Ibos, Hausa and other groups, still largely wear their traditional textiles not only for special occasions, but also as part of daily life.

During my visit in 2022 to Port Harcourt in Nigeria, the fridays were used to allow hotel staff to wear traditional attire. The hotel itself had beautiful local textile artworks throughout,  evidencing how the Nigerian people actively find ways to incorporate their traditional identity into a contemporary setting.

Unlike the western concepts of museaums in America and Europe,  African traditions are lived, are very much alive and touches peoples life on a daily basis. Traditions interact with it's people, allowing it to be part of the peoples consciousness.