ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Africa’s fashion industry is growing rapidly to meet local and international demand, but insufficient investment is limiting its potential, UNESCO said Thursday in a report released during Lagos Fashion Week.
Currently valued at $15.5 billion worth of exports annually, earnings from the continent’s fashion industry could triple in a decade with the right investment and infrastructure, according to UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay, who presented the the organization’s first African fashion show in Nigeria. financial center of Lagos.
With a young population of 1.3 billion people set to double by 2050, the continent’s fashion industry has also proven to be a “powerful driver for promoting cultural diversity (and) also a way to empower young and women,” said Azoulay. .
Across the continent, fashion continues to develop on various fronts – including movies and films – in the form of textiles, apparel as well as accessories and fine crafts, all with a long history of prestige and symbolism in African culture.
Demand for African fashion brands is also being fueled by the growth of e-commerce, the UNESCO report notes.
Africa leads the world in mobile internet traffic, according to the US International Trade Administration. This has opened up more opportunities in the market so that across Nigeria, for example, young people on social media are steadily opening fashion brands.
“Africans want to wear Africa. It’s really beautiful to see because it wasn’t always like that,” said Omoyemi Akerele, who founded Lagos Fashion Week in 2011 to encourage the patronage of Nigerian and African fashion. “But fast forward a decade later, that’s all people want to wear.”
With a mix of designers from across the continent, the annual fashion show celebrates—and provides a market for—local brands that primarily showcase African culture and arts in a variety of colors and styles.
In Nigeria and other parts of Africa, young fashion designers are hungry for success and taking the world stage, the UNESCO director-general said.
“A new breed of young designers is causing a stir on the international stage, reinventing the code of luxury while reconciling them with the demands of sustainable, local fashion and heritage,” he said.
One such designer at Lagos Fashion Week, Ejiro Amos-Tafiri, said she uses her brand to tell African stories while celebrating “the complexity, class and uniqueness of every woman”.
“With more exposure, people realize that there is a lot of culture in Nigerian culture, especially in the fashion industry,” he said. “So Africa really is the next frontier (for the fashion industry).”