Chitenje

Chitenje is Malawi's name for the wax-print cotton tradition shared across East and Central Africa, known elsewhere as kitenge (Kenya, Tanzania) and chitenge (Zambia). No origin distinct from this wider batik-derived tradition is documented for Malawi specifically. What is well documented is a specifically Malawian political use of the cloth: since the era of president Hastings Banda, political parties have commissioned campaign chitenjes printed with candidate portraits, party emblems, and party colours — the People's Party's 2014 cloth, for example, carried an orange background, the party's lock-and-key emblem, a portrait of Banda, and a printed slogan in both English and Chichewa, while the Malawi Congress Party is associated with black, red, and green.

The chitenje is worn as an everyday wrap skirt by women of all generations — it is said that nearly every woman in Malawi owns at least one. Beyond daily wear, it carries a well-documented mourning role: worn at funerals and memorial ceremonies, with many women keeping a chitenje on hand or at work for unexpected funerals. Its political role — printed campaign cloth bearing candidate portraits and party symbols — has drawn dedicated academic study of the chitenje's place in Malawian popular culture, gender, and politics. The cloth remains widely worn and sold across Malawi today, and has also featured in cross-cultural projects, including a commemorative Scotland-Malawi chitenje cloth.