Kente: who owns a cloth that is also a language?

Few textiles carry as much meaning per square centimetre as kente. A single cloth can name a proverb, a chief, a historical event or a plant; it can tell a village who is getting married and tell a stranger who is important. It has been worn by kings in Kumasi and by graduates in Atlanta, imitated in factory prints sold across West Africa, and quoted in a Louis Vuitton collection. In 2024 UNESCO inscribed it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In 2025 Ghana gave it a legal shield that, for the first time, lets the country say who may call a cloth "kente" and who may not.

That is a lot of attention for something made, strip by strip, on a horizontal wooden loom. This article follows the cloth from the loom outwards: how it is made, where it may have come from (and why that is still argued over), what it says, and what the new protections do and do not change for the people who weave it, and for anyone who wants to buy it honestly.

What kente actually is

UNESCO's description is a good place to start because it is plain. Kente in Ghana, it says, is "a fabric made of strips that are woven from silk, cotton or rayon using horizontal looms" (UNESCO). The strips are narrow, and the finished cloth is assembled by sewing them side by side. An eighteenth-century Danish description quoted in the scholarly literature mentions bands "three fingers wide", with twelve strips sewn into a sash (Kente cloth, Wikipedia, citing Adjaye & Andrews 1997).

The name itself is debated. One commonly given etymology links it to the Asante word kɛntɛn, "basket", for the basket-like look of the weave; the Akan also call the cloth nwentoma, simply "woven cloth" (same source).

Two points are worth keeping in mind from the start. First, "kente" is not one cloth. Asante kente and Ewe kente share a name and a loom, but they have separate histories, vocabularies and patterns, and the Ewe tradition is often described as using double-woven bands, which makes its structure different (Wikipedia, citing Boateng 2011). Second, the popular idea of kente as a generically "African" cloth is, in the words of the Ghanaian scholar Dickson Adom, flawed: he argues that Asante kente is distinctly Asante (The Conversation).

Two brothers, a spider, and a very old argument

Ask in Bonwire, in the Ashanti Region, where kente comes from and you will be told a story that has been repeated for generations. Two hunter brothers, Opoku Kuragu and Kwakye Ameyaw, were in the forest around 1720 when they watched a spider, Ananse, building its web. They copied the interlacing with raffia fibre, and the first cloth, Adom reports, was black and white. Adom, a lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology who did fieldwork in Bonwire between June 2020 and March 2021, adds that hunting guns and lamps kept in the brothers' family house are taken as supporting evidence, and that rituals are still held in their rooms each year to seek their blessing (The Conversation).

In this account the cloth then gains royal patronage. Osei Tutu I, the first king of the Asante, is said to have given the brothers' lineage stools, the marks of title, and the task of weaving for all Asante kings. Later figures extend the craft: Ota Kraban is credited with building the first wooden hand loom, called Nsadua Kofi, and with introducing yellow, green and black yarns; Nana Osei Kuffour with geometric weave patterns. Bonwire still holds an annual kente festival that retraces the brothers' steps with libations (The Conversation).

It is a compelling story, and it deserves to be taken seriously as the living tradition of a community. It also deserves to be read with care, for three reasons.

First, it is one account. Adom's piece is an essay, not a peer-reviewed paper, and it opens by acknowledging a rival claim: that kente began instead at Adanwomase, another weaving town in the Ashanti Region (The Conversation). The essay does not set out the Adanwomase case, so the dispute remains unresolved on the page.

Second, other traditions give different dates and routes. Another account, summarised in the same Wikipedia entry citing Afeadie (2013), credits a Bonwire man who brought a loom from Bono Gyaman in the seventeenth century, under Nana Oti Akenten. And the Ewe tradition, for its part, places the start of weaving in the sixteenth century, with migrants from what is now Benin and western Nigeria; Keta was a weaving centre in the eighteenth century, and a 1718 Dutch West India Company report is the earliest description cited (Wikipedia).

Third, the archaeology points to a much older regional weaving culture than any single origin story. Spindle whorls and dye holes at the sites of Begho and Bono Manso have been dated to between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, and whorls at Wenchi to the sixteenth and seventeenth (Wikipedia, citing Afeadie 2013 and Kriger 2006). Historians generally treat kente as growing out of weaving traditions that existed in West Africa before the Asante kingdom took shape. The honest summary is that Bonwire's claim is the best known and, in Adom's account, the best documented in oral tradition; that Adanwomase and the Ewe towns have serious claims of their own; and that no one has yet produced a single, agreed chronology.

The king's cloth

What is not in doubt is that, by the eighteenth century, kente was bound up with power. Danish agents in the Gold Coast, the authors Nog and Rømer, recorded that the Asantehene Opoku Ware I encouraged crafts and set up a weaving workshop (Wikipedia, citing Adjaye & Andrews 1997 and McGregor et al. 2022). In 1817 the British envoy Thomas Edward Bowdich described Asante cloths of "incredible size and weight" (same entry, citing Afeadie 2013). Bonwire became the town that supplied the court.

Kente was for a long time a cloth of occasions, of royalty, and of rank. UNESCO's file stresses the code embedded in it: "The age, social status and gender of users influence the choice of colour and design of the fabric", finished pieces "are named with proverbs, sayings and social situations", and the cloth works, in its words, as "a means of communication and a vehicle of information transfer and exchange" (UNESCO).

Patterns number in the hundreds, and names come from proverbs, events, chiefs, queen mothers and plants (Wikipedia, citing Asamoah-Yaw 2017). Two named patterns show the range. Ahwepan is a simple warp-stripe design in plain weave that needs only one pair of heddles. Adweneasa means "I've exhausted my skills", and it is so densely patterned with weft designs that it requires three heddles (Wikipedia, citing Gilfoy 1987 and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art). The name is also a boast: the weaver is announcing that there is nothing left to add.

A word of caution on colour. The tables of colour meanings that circulate online (gold for wealth and royalty, green for renewal, black for maturity and ancestors, and so on) are real conventions in many contexts, but the version most widely copied traces back to a source that even Wikipedia flags as needing a better reference. Meanings vary by community, by cloth and by occasion. Treat any single list as a starting point, and ask the weaver.

Who weaves it

The popular picture is of a man seated at a narrow loom, and many accounts do describe kente weaving as traditionally male (Wikipedia, citing Boateng 2011). UNESCO's inscription file gives a more nuanced description of the whole production chain: "Both women and men are involved in the production process, with women being in charge primarily of weaving and producing cotton yarn and men producing the loom and other relevant tools." Each community of producers is led by a chief weaver, responsible for "regulating the standards of production, resolving conflict among weavers, and establishing linkages and networks for knowledge acquisition and trade" (UNESCO).

The two descriptions do not sit perfectly together, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. They probably reflect different communities, different periods and different definitions of "weaving". What they agree on is that the craft is transmitted through years of apprenticeship, starting early. Adom reports that children begin to learn at home from about the age of five, and that in Bonwire he counted more than forty shops trading in kente (The Conversation). Skills also pass through master weavers, and now through schools and tertiary programmes, museums, workshops and festivals, according to UNESCO.

For a sense of effort, our own heritage guide, drawing on documented sources, puts a full ceremonial cloth at two to six weeks of work (Kente weaving in Ghana).

From the palace to the stole

In the twentieth century kente left the palace. It became a symbol of Ghana, then of Africa, then of the diaspora. Today it is worn at weddings, funerals and festivals in Ghana, and academic stoles in kente are a fixture of graduation ceremonies for African American and other diaspora students, at institutions such as Florida A&M University (Wikipedia).

That success has had a cost, because kente now exists on three levels at once. At the top is authentic hand-woven cloth, the most expensive. Below it are printed "kente" fabrics produced by companies such as Vlisco and the Ghanaian manufacturer Akosombo Textiles. And at the bottom are mass-produced kente-pattern goods, typically made in China for West African buyers (Wikipedia). Each tier answers a different budget, and the problem is not that the cheaper tiers exist, but that they can be sold under the name of the first.

Two episodes show how contested the boundary has become. In June 2020, Democratic members of the US Congress knelt in the Capitol Visitor Center wearing kente stoles, drawing criticism from, among others, the researcher Jade Bentil. And in Virgil Abloh's autumn-winter 2021 collection for Louis Vuitton, a printed kente design appeared, with Abloh quoted as saying "Provenance is reality; ownership is a myth" (Wikipedia, citing CNN 2020 and other reports). Both are reminders that a cloth which carries a language can be quoted by people who have never learned it.

Law catches up: UNESCO and a Geographical Indication

Ghana's Copyright Act of 2005 (Act 690) covered kente designs, but scholars noted that it offered limited protection against third-party manufacturers (Wikipedia, citing Okyere & Denoncourt 2021). Two recent decisions move beyond copyright.

The first is cultural. At its 19th session, held in Asunción, Paraguay, from 2 to 7 December 2024, the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee decided to inscribe the "Craftsmanship of traditional woven textile Kente" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (decision 19.COM 7.B.38). The Committee commended Ghana on its first inscription (UNESCO decision). The file notes that kente is also part of formal teaching, from high school to university.

The second is commercial. In 2025 Ghana registered kente as its first Geographical Indication, the same family of protection that reserves Champagne and Parmesan to their regions. It was announced in Accra in September 2025, with the Registrar-General's Department and the World Intellectual Property Organization. In plain terms, only cloth hand-woven in designated Ghanaian communities may legally be called kente; factory-printed and mass-produced imitations may not use the name (BellaNaija; Business & Financial Times).

One detail is worth flagging because it matters to weavers. Reports do not agree on which communities are named. Bonwire, Adanwomase, Kpetoe and Agbozume appear in one report; other outlets name Bonwire, Agotime Kpetoe and Sakora Wonoo. We could not find the official list in a primary document, and until it is published the safe statement is that the protection depends on place and on traditional technique, and that the exact roll of communities should be checked with Ghana's Registrar-General's Department.

It is also worth being realistic about what a legal label can do. A Geographical Indication protects a name; it does not by itself raise a weaver's income. It needs enforcement, collective standards among weavers, and business support to reach buyers. For weavers, the promise is better prices and market access. The proof will be in the next few years.

Buying kente honestly

For a designer or a collector, the new context makes a few habits more important.

Ask where it was woven and by whom. A credible seller can name the town and, ideally, the weaver or workshop. Under the Geographical Indication, the place is now part of what the word kente means.

Ask what the fibres are. UNESCO lists silk, cotton and rayon. Each is legitimate, and each has a different price and hand. A clear answer is a good sign.

Look at how it is made, not only how it looks. Hand-woven kente is assembled from narrow strips sewn together; a printed cloth imitates the look of strips on a single wide sheet. If the seller cannot explain the weave, take that as information.

Respect the name of the pattern. Many designs are proverbs. If you are commissioning cloth for a collection, ask what the pattern means and whether it suits the use you have in mind.

Price honestly. A cloth that takes weeks of skilled work cannot cost what a printed approximation costs. The gap is not a premium; it is the labour.

On Textiles of Africa, every producer is verified before a storefront goes live, and listings are reviewed before they appear, precisely so that technique, materials and origin can be stated plainly. As kente weavers from Bonwire and other communities come on board, their storefronts will appear on our producers page, with the heritage guide one click away. In the meantime, our kente guide sets out the documented history, and its uncertainties, in more detail.

What to take away

Kente is at once a technique, a language, a source of income and an emblem. Its origin story is cherished in Bonwire and contested elsewhere. Its weaving is taught at home, in workshops and in lecture halls. UNESCO has recognised it, and Ghana's Geographical Indication gives it a legal edge it never had. None of that settles who the cloth belongs to, but it does clarify who has the right to name it, and that is a start.

Sources and notes

• UNESCO, Craftsmanship of traditional woven textile Kente (Representative List, 2024).
• UNESCO, Decision 19.COM 7.B.38, Intergovernmental Committee, Asunción, December 2024.
• Dickson Adom, What are the origins of the Asante's famous kente cloth? I traced its history to find out, The Conversation Africa (author's fieldwork June 2020 to March 2021; an essay, not a peer-reviewed article).
• Kente cloth, Wikipedia, used as a finding aid to the scholarship it cites: Adjaye & Andrews (1997), Afeadie (2013), Kriger (2006), Boateng (2011), Gilfoy (1987), Asamoah-Yaw (2017), Okyere & Denoncourt (2021). Readers should consult those works directly for page-level references.
• BellaNaija, Ghana's kente earns Geographical Indication protection (14 October 2025).
• Business & Financial Times, Kente secures GI protection to unlock the commercial value and improve revenue for weavers (13 October 2025; only the headline was accessible to us).

Where sources disagree we have said so, and we have not smoothed over gaps. If you can correct or extend anything here, write to contact@textilesofafrica.com.