The Africa fashion week(AFW) remains a top-rising fashion show which embraces African attire home and abroad, it aims at promoting African fashion style, textiles, and designers and also to create awareness and confidence for Africans around the world to value their African style. The Africa fashion week(AFW) 2023 is set for May 25th -May 27th to be held at Expo Centre Norte in South Paulo Brazil which would be the first African Fashion Week in Brazil.
In recent press conference held at the Brazilian Embassy Victoria Island Lagos on the Consul General of Brazil and also the Brazil Ambassador to Nigeria Ministro Andre Veras Guimaraes stated;
“it is an honor for me to take part in this press conference to showcase the Africa fashion week in Brazil, the Africa Fashion Week Nigeria was established by her majesty herself in 2014 with the aim of promoting emerging African designers on global platforms, the fashion industry promotes diversity of culture expressions and values. It involves creativity and depicts the tradition of textile heritage and craftmanship.
The fashion and textile industry in Africa is growing and as at November 2022, the sub-Saharan Africa sector was reported to have an estimated worth of 31Billion USD.African textiles and fashion are spreading around the world. Fashion and clothing matter to the economy, the society and to individuals.
Adding that the industry generates activities in trade and creates employment opportunities.
This year edition of African Fashion Week is scheduled for the 25th to 27th of may 2023 at Expo Centre in South Paulo, holding the event in Brazil not only maintain the tradition of the African continent as a mark in Brazil but can also be seen as an instrument of cooperation between Nigeria and the communities in Brazil creating a synergy in the fashion industry between Brazil and Africa will promote economic growth, boost cultural ties and provide a platform for future cooperation even in other sectors of the economy.
Brazil has the largest population of African descendants outside Africa including a large Yoruba community. In the last census 50.7% of Brazilians declared themselves to be Black or of mixed race. We put mixed race because we have couples of blacks and whites, blacks and indias.Savador has one of Brazil largest black population.
The state also have significant level of circulation and consumption of West African textile. Generations of Brazilians of African Descendant have preserved their cultural heritage and religion. Brazil has been making extensive effort to value and to promote the history and culture of Africa and the African Brazilian population encouraging the inclusion of African history in the education system and implementing policies to support racial ethic relations. Recently President Lula signed a law that reserves 30% of all executive position in the public administration to Black Brazilians.
Brazil and Nigeria have maintained good and diversified relations and are both committed to developing the trade and cultural relationship. The fashion industry is one of the tools that can promote the bilateral relationship between Brazil and Nigeria as a country and with Africa as a whole.
I hope that in the future there will be many African weeks in Brazil not only in South Paulo as well as many Brazilian weeks in Nigeria for a strong and deeply root to the ties between our countries and continent. Once again I would like to congratulate your majesty Queen Ronke for the initiative and wish all the best for this edition of African Fashion Week”
The founder of Africa Fashion Week London(AFWL) and Africa Fashion Week Nigeria (AFWN) Her royal Majesty Queen Ronke Ademiluyi Ogunwusi, wife of Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi{Ooni of Ife} regarded and thanked everyone present at the meeting, corroborating what the Brazil Ambassador said;
“His excellency has said it all but I’m going to give you a bit of history of Africa Fashion week(AFW),how we started and how we got to where we are today. Since 2011 when we started in London, it was created to as a platform to reach the gap between African designers, black designers and the general public.
When we started over a decade ago, there wasn’t a platform that brought together African designers and the global audience, most of the platforms then were mainstream platforms, and a lot of people would shy away from Africa Fashion because it was considered traditional, people were not proud to wear African Fashion especially abroad.
I grew up in London, I was born there and while growing up I know we did not have that exposure to Africa Fashion unlike now where everywhere, amazing phenomenal African designers both at home and abroad are doing so many wonderful things with our textiles and our fabrics, but way back then it was not available, so it was out of that moral obligation and urgent need to create a platform that showcase the great creativity of African designers that we gave birth to Africa Fashion week London.
The African Fashion week is about exposure to a wider audience. In 2014, we created a sister brand called African Fashion week Nigeria to enable us to reach out to equally talented designers within Nigeria and within Africa for people who cannot afford the logistics of traveling during the international show because when you commission a designer to participate in the fashion week London, there are so many things that are involved in it.There is logistics of traveling, accommodation, putting their collections together, marketing, and all of that and it is not all emerging designers that can afford that, it was based on that that we created the Africa Fashion week Nigeria platform in 2014 and it’s going to be our 9th year this year, African Fashion week London is going to be our 14th year and we have given birth to a new baby, African Fashion week Brazil.
Lot of students often after graduation complain of no jobs, we encourage vocational skills training and that is one of the reasons why his majesty set up the Adire training hub in Ile Ife in 2021, we have trained over 500 young women, this is to encourage young graduates to learn a skill. It is a branch of Africa Fashion week where teach these young people different skill of Adire, the adire eleko, the adire oniko, the adire alabela, in a nutshell, we are encouraging young people to take up vocational training skill, we are also using fashion as an instrument of wealth creation, job creation and alleviation of poverty.”
By: Sunday Adebayo.