Africa

How African fashion reaches its full economic potential

THE SCENE

LAGOS — A year ago, 25-year-old Peter Oshobor took part in an initiative that allowed up-and-coming Nigerian designers to exhibit only three pieces at Lagos Fashion Week. But in the period between that and his 18-piece return to this year’s edition of the event last month, he has presented a collection in New York and Atlanta, and produced work for a client on a Victoria’s Secret tour.

The rise of designers like Oshobor makes the case that African fashion is in a boom era, as an inaugural report published in October by Unesco on African fashion trends argues. Increased demand has come from “an expanding urban middle class in Africa and international buyers, who both value the originality and quality of African design and craftsmanship,” the report said. It estimates annual African textile, clothing, and footwear exports at $15.5 billion.

But Africa’s potential is still held back by myriad challenges. Africa-based designers are constrained by poor infrastructure, sparse investment, and limited intellectual property protections, plus difficulties accessing new markets and sourcing quality materials, the report said. Unesco estimates that Africa’s textile, clothing and footwear trade deficit is $7.6 billion, a consequence of decades of policy changes that stifled local production, inviting an influx of second-hand clothing from abroad.

“While the textiles and garments sector is the second largest sector in the developing world after agriculture, a lot of its potential is still waiting to be realized in Africa,” the report said.

KNOW MORE

Hand-made designs crafted to be worn by upper middle class career professionals and fashion enthusiasts have become a favored product of many African fashion houses. But industrial-scale production for the mass market is on the rise too. An example is in Rwanda where Asantii rolls out thousands of ready-to-wear garments from a 24,000 square foot plant powered by over 4,000 staff.

“It’s actually easier to deal with someone in the UK and US than someone within Africa,” Mai Atafo, founder of his eponymous Nigeria-based brand, told Semafor Africa. “The excise duties for sending goods from Lagos to Nairobi doesn’t make it profitable for a business.”

ALEXANDER’S VIEW

Africa’s fashion entrepreneurs appear to be making giant strides in spite of a minefield of obstacles that should discourage them. For one, institutional funding on the scale flowing to African film, music and technology startups has yet to consider fashion a noteworthy investment category. That compels brands to bootstrap towards stability against the tides of costs and competition, while constantly scrambling to find capable staff willing to commit to long periods of engagement.

“Fashion is a very capital intensive industry in which you can have so much money tied up in stock,” Iona McCreath, who leads Nairobi-based brand Kiko Romeo, told Semafor Africa. She said retailers are generally risk averse and prefer a consignment model where a retailer stocks the goods and only remits to the designer as they sell on to customers. “You have to front those costs as a designer. It gets very expensive,” said McCreath.

Read on for Room for Disagreement and the View from Dar es Salaam.

Activists in Ghana have in recent years raised concerns about the environmental consequences of hosting one of the world’s biggest markets for secondhand clothes.

While the garments sold at Kantamanto market are popular, activists say unsellable waste is often disguised as charity from the West that is later dumped in landfills and waterways.

The Or Foundation, a U.S.-Ghanaian nonprofit, has focused on raising global awareness about what it calls the fashion industry’s waste crisis through its own research around the trade in Ghana and the global supply chains.

The organization and its partners took a different approach last Sunday by supporting an urban thrift festival called Obroni Wawu October (OWO 2023) in Accra’s Rawlings Park. Top of the bill was a runway show featuring “upcycled” designs from five emerging designers from the local Kantamanto community.

Traveling while African

Noo Saro-Wiwa is an award winning author and journalist, born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England. She is the daughter of the late Nigerian activist and author Ken Saro-Wiwa. In 2012, she published Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria. Her new book, Black Ghosts: A Journey Into The Lives of Africans in China (2023), was released this week. It addresses the opportunities for African people and their experiences living in China.

💡 In your interactions with the subjects of your new book, what were the recurring motifs that explain Africans’ desire for a better life in China?

China can sometimes offer an acceptance and social mobility that Africans would struggle to find in their home countries or Europe. Some Nigerians told me that they prefer to operate in China where the rule of law is tighter, electricity is constant and infrastructure is better. The universities are better funded too.

💡 What have you learned, through the experiences of Africans, about racism in China and the West?

When it comes to racism, China lags behind the West partly because, unlike the West, it hasn’t had black citizens whose activism has helped shape its laws and attitudes over the centuries. And China doesn’t have a global colonial past to reckon with. Having said that, China might not be as far behind as we think — they’re simply more upfront and honest about their prejudices compared to Westerners.

💡 Can you be a successful African travel writer using an African passport?

Having a Western passport is a huge privilege. An African passport makes it harder to see the world, no doubt, but it’s not a barrier to being a travel writer. Travel doesn’t necessarily involve crossing oceans or continents. You can travel within your own country, or visit other nations in your region of Africa. The continent is so diverse — the cultural and environmental differences between southern Nigeria and neighboring Niger, for example, are huge, yet we’re next-door neighbors. But yes, if you have ambitions to write about places like Australia, South America or Europe, then an African passport is a big hindrance. It really saddens me how different people can have different levels of access to our planet. It’s so unjust.

💡 How has the legacy of your father influenced your work?

I’ve spent my entire adult life without him, so it’s hard to say what kind of life choices I might have made had he still been alive. My relationship with Nigeria in my twenties certainly would’ve been different, which means I probably wouldn’t have written my first book, Looking For Transwonderland, which charts my return to the country after a long absence following my father’s death. I might not even have dared to be a writer — it would feel like I was stepping on his territory. I probably would’ve done something else instead.

💡 What Nigerian dish makes you miss home when you’re traveling on the other side of the world?

Jollof rice, fried plantain and goat meat are the Holy Trinity for me. I ate that dish twice a day every single day during my five-month trip around Nigeria in 2007-8 (back then I could eat anything I wanted without gaining weight). I also adore boiled yam with beef or goat stew.

— Muchira Gachenge

🇬🇦 The Gabonese community in southern France is demanding the return of a rare 19th-century African sculpted mask made by the Fang people of Gabon, after it fetched $4.5 million at an auction in Montpellier city in France last year. The mask was collected in Gabon by the French colonial governor René-Victor Edward Maurice Fournier around 1917, from whom a French couple that sold it prior to the auction inherited it. Angelique Chrisafis writes in the Guardian that while activists seek the return of the mask — one of only about a dozen in the world — to Africa, the French couple is also in court for a share of the mask’s proceeds.

🇿🇼 In Zimbabwe one of the world’s largest forest conservation initiatives is on the verge of collapse after the Swiss carbon consultancy South Pole announced its exit. Bloomberg reports that South Pole cut ties with partner organization Carbon Green Investments, which owns and develops the Kariba project covering 2 million acres of forest in the country’s north. It comes after recent allegations of financial misappropriation. The two organizations are alleged to have benefited from the project that has generated nearly $100 million by selling credits for more than 23 million tons since 2011.

🇳🇬 State governments in northern Nigeria have over the last decade sponsored mass weddings for thousands of local young couples. Ebenezer Obadare, writing in the Council on Foreign Relations blog, calls such programs into question. He argues that the role of the state in such affairs should be strictly limited to observation and record keeping, as the extreme involvement in such initiatives threaten the foundation of civil society, and individuals end up being treated as dependents.

🇨🇮 Côte d’Ivoire’s architectural duo Issa Diabaté and Guillaume Koffi, whose work seeks to mirror traditional West African buildings and lifestyles, are on a mission to change the face of African urbanism. In a Financial Times profile, Joe Penney writes that the award-winning team, who regard community and environmental care as being crucial in their industry, also take influence from Abidjan’s architectural boom in the 1960s and ’70s. They prefer to build homes where the communal areas are essentially outdoors to allow more cross-ventilation and blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces.

🗓️ Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and the Republic of Senegal will hear the preliminary ruling on the dissolution of his political party in the Ecowas Court of Justice on Monday. (Nov. 6)

🗓️ Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kubela will visit South Africa on Monday. He’ll meet with foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor in Pretoria. (Nov. 6)

🗓️ Shares in Airtel Uganda are expected to start trading on the Uganda Securities Exchange after the completion of its IPO. It is expected to raise 800 billion Ugandan shillings ($213 million) by selling a 20% stake. (Nov. 7)

🗓️ Africa Investment Forum’s annual three-day Market Days event will bring together investors, business and government leaders, and heads of development finance institutions in Marrakech, Morocco. (Nov. 8-10)

🗓️ Kenyan mobile phone company Safaricom will release half-year results for the six months to Sep. 30, 2023. (Nov. 8)

🗓️ The Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) organized by Afrexim Bank, in partnership with African Union Commission and the African Continental Free Trade Area secretariat, will kick off in Cairo. (Nov. 9-15)

🗓️ Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa will take on Morocco’s Wydad Casablanca in the second leg of the inaugural African Football League final in Pretoria, South Africa. (Nov. 11)

• The biggest donor set in America is still undecided on the Republican presidential field, leaving millions up for grabs in what is expected to be the most expensive election ever.
• Major Chinese social media platforms announced they will begin requiring influencers with more than 500,000 followers to display their real names, breaking one of the last pillars of online anonymity in China.
• Microsoft has added a major new capability to one of its smaller large language models, a big step that shows less expensive AI tech can have some of the same features as OpenAI’s massive GPT-4.

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— Yinka, Alexis Akwagyiram, Alexander Onukwue, Martin Siele, and Muchira Gachenge