Kabylie highlands
Kabyle rug weaving · Kabyle (Amazigh)
Berber women of Kabylie weave wool rugs with geometric motifs using techniques that sources describe as largely unchanged since antiquity.
Read the heritage guide →Every producer on Textiles of Africa is verified before their storefront goes live. Buy directly from weavers, dyers and embroiderers, with payment held in escrow until delivery.
We verify each producer (identity, business registration, sample photos) before publishing their storefront. While the first producers are being onboarded, explore the craft traditions below, or apply to sell your own cloth.
Places and peoples historically associated with each tradition, drawn from our heritage library. These are cultural references, not a list of sellers.
Kabyle rug weaving · Kabyle (Amazigh)
Berber women of Kabylie weave wool rugs with geometric motifs using techniques that sources describe as largely unchanged since antiquity.
Read the heritage guide →Fon appliqué · Fon
In the kingdom of Dahomey, appliqué banners recorded battles, proverbs and royal emblems: panels of hand-dyed cotton cut and stitched onto a plain ground.
Read the heritage guide →Kanvo weaving · Fon, Yoruba
Kanvo, "woven cloth" in Fon, entered the Abomey court under King Agonglo in the late 18th century; King Ghezo later trained large weaving families across the kingdom.
Read the heritage guide →Indigo dyeing · Bariba, Yoruba
The Bariba towns of the north, like Yoruba Abeokuta, were among West Africa's great indigo centres, with dye pits in use since at least the 15th century and recipes passed from mother to daughter.
Read the heritage guide →Faso Dan Fani · Dioula
"Cloth woven from the homeland": institutionalised as a national symbol under Thomas Sankara (1983-1987), who wore it publicly, including at the United Nations.
Read the heritage guide →Toghu embroidery · Bamileke, Bamenda, Banso, Kom
Toghu is the embroidered velvet of the Grassfields peoples. Sources differ on its exact origin, including a possible 19th-century link to the Bamoun kingdom.
Read the heritage guide →Korhogo painted cloth · Senufo
Senufo painters around Korhogo produce full-panel painted cotton cloths. The form as known today emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, after the earlier narrow-strip fila cloth.
Read the heritage guide →Kuba cloth · Kuba
Raffia cloth with a distinctive geometric art, developed over roughly three centuries inside the Kuba kingdom. The earliest documented pieces were collected in the early 20th century.
Read the heritage guide →Siwa embroidery · Siwi (Amazigh)
Embroidery of the Siwi people, of Amazigh origin and settled in the oasis since the 14th-15th centuries. Any link to pharaonic symbolism remains a hypothesis.
Read the heritage guide →Lihiya (emahiya) · Swazi
The lihiya is a draped printed cloth worn by the Swazi. Its closest documented cultural anchor is the annual Umhlanga (Reed Dance) at Ludzidzini.
Read the heritage guide →Habesha kemis and tibeb · Amhara
The high-end "menen" cloth developed in the Shiro Meda workshops around the 1890s, tied to royal prestige; the tibeb border is believed to be a later development.
Read the heritage guide →Raffia weaving · Téké
Raffia weaving in the wider Congo Basin, including among the Téké of Gabon, had reached a high degree of technical refinement by the 16th century.
Read the heritage guide →Kente weaving · Ashanti, Ewe
The town of Bonwire claims to be the birthplace of kente. Narrow strips about 10 cm wide are woven on a horizontal loom, then sewn into cloths whose patterns carry names and proverbs.
Read the heritage guide →Kanga · Swahili
The kanga emerged on the Swahili coast in the mid-to-late 19th century; its standard layout of border, central motif and printed saying settled between 1876 and 1886.
Read the heritage guide →Seanamarena blanket · Basotho
Tradition holds that King Moshoeshoe I draped a gifted wool blanket over his shoulders in place of the animal-skin kaross, turning an imported object into a symbol of identity.
Read the heritage guide →Lamba arindrano (wild silk) · Betsileo
Wild-silk (landibe) cloth of the Betsileo, historically reserved for powerful men or woven into funerary shrouds, distinct from the Merina lamba akotofahana.
Read the heritage guide →Bogolanfini (mud cloth) · Bamana
Bamana women dye hand-woven cotton with fermented, iron-rich mud over a leaf-based resist; the reaction with the tannins leaves a permanent dark brown or black.
Read the heritage guide →Beni Ourain rugs · Beni Ourain confederation (Zenete Amazigh)
A confederation of 17 Zenete Amazigh tribes weaves the wool rugs known as Beni Ourain; sources place the tradition's origins in the 7th or 9th century without firm consensus.
Read the heritage guide →Adire · Yoruba
Adire emerged as a named tradition in the early 20th century around Abeokuta and Ibadan, spreading fast in the 1920s-1930s once imported cotton shirting became widely available to Yoruba dyers.
Read the heritage guide →Manjak woven cloth · Manjak (Manjaco)
Woven cloth of the Manjak people, originally from Guinea-Bissau and present in Casamance, the Gambia and Cape Verde. Dakar tradition points to the village of Kalëkis; academic sources do not confirm this.
Read the heritage guide →Shweshwe · Xhosa
Indigo-dyed cloth reached the Eastern Cape through German traders, who sold it as "ujamani"; Xhosa women adopted it from the late 1850s.
Read the heritage guide →Margoum rugs · Amazigh tribes of southern Tunisia
The margoum, named after the Arabic regma ("lozenge"), is woven by Amazigh tribes of the south, with the town of Oudref considered its historical centre.
Read the heritage guide →Barkcloth · Baganda
Barkcloth from the mutuba tree has been made continuously in Buganda for at least three centuries, predating the cotton introduced by Arab traders in the early 1840s.
Read the heritage guide →