Africa’s not new to sustainable fashion; it’s true to it

This was the core of Twyg’s sixth annual Africa Textile Talks, held at the V&A Waterfront’s Watershed this past weekend. Stacked with award-winning sustainable fashion experts — including Earthshot Prize winner Omoyemi Akerele and Twyg Sustainable Award-winner Wanda Lephoto, among many, many more — this year’s talks reinforced that Africa’s not new to sustainable fashion; it’s true to it.

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The paradoxical problem

Kicking things off was Presidential Climate Commissioner, Thandile Zonke, who laid the groundwork, outlining the dire effects that climate change has on Africa.

While she spoke from the perspective of climate policy, she noted her exposure to slow fashion came from her mother, who would sew clothing and ensure that she’d stand out when she went out in her leopard print cuffed tracksuits.

She also pointed to her home province, the Eastern Cape, which has already lived through a transition.

“I come from the Eastern Cape, renowned for its manufacturing textiles, and now one of the country’s cleanest litmus tests for what a badly handled transition can cost,” she said.

“We did not lose the industry as a result of a lack of skills, or demand, or pride in the work. We lost the transition that arrived faster than the plan for it.

“Trade liberalisation and deindustrialisation contributed to the disruption of the textile industry in my home province; this is defensible in policy terms, but it’s a chasm in terms of human ones, and it’s one we risk replicating with the climate change crisis if we do not act properly,” she remarked.

Fashion is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Zonke laid out the facts:

• Around 10% of global carbon emissions come from textiles and apparel, and more than international flights and shipping combined.
  
• 2,700 litres of water from cotton, 2,100 litres from water are from cotton in one shirt, and closer to 10,000 for a pair of jeans.
  
• 220 megatons of carbon dioxide from cotton farming alone, and more than a single fibre is spun.

She added that 90% of global deforestation is now driven by agricultural expansion, saying “this is not a fashion problem; it’s a monoculture problem.”

With Africa bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, Zonke indicated that while Africa has contributed the least to emissions—about 3-4%—we are saddled with the highest cost of the climate crisis.

“If African producers absorb the shocks of a system that they didn’t design and barely emit into, the only durable path to change is, in these terms, not to endure them.

“Climate finance and adaptation support for how it reaches textiles, the value chains directly — that is all very integral to this process,” said Zonke.

However, all is not lost. Investment in the just energy transition could open up more possibilities for South Africa.

Zonke said that as investment in clean power grows, new textile jobs could land in those same places where jobs are ending.

She also noted that offshoot industries related to the coal industry have given rise to a secondary industry, as more women in households gain offshoot jobs related to them.

“The textile industry is well placed to fill in this gap. There are growing regional value chains; the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) gives Africa a chance to spin, weave, and finish closer to where the cotton is grown, which is catching transportation emissions and keeping value and jobs on the continent,” said Zonke.

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The vision for African fashion

Next up was Twyg Sustainable Fashion award-winning South African designer and visionary, Wanda Lephoto, who had the room hanging on his every word with his novel way of presenting his keynote.

Taking the form of a book (which I hope will be available soon!), Lephoto discussed his brand’s approach to fashion, emphasising the intersection of African traditions and global influences.

“My work has always existed at the intersection of design, research, memory, and spirituality,” he said in the opening of his keynote address.

“I see design more than the creation of clothing. It is a way of asking questions, of returning to histories, and examining the cultural codes that shape how we understand ourselves and one another.

“Through research, I look to archives, family histories, popular culture, religion, music, photography, and everyday life as places where meaning can be found and reconsidered.”

Sharing personal stories that have had a meaningful impact on his life, he described how his sister’s appearance in an ad for a South African retailer as the country’s democracy dawned in 1995 had a profound effect on him.

“Her presence represents impossibility, a glimpse into an untapped future where we could begin to see ourselves differently,” he recalled.

“Perhaps this is what images do; they become memories, and memories become a way of understanding who we were, who we are, and who we might still become.”

This has largely shaped his approach to his ready-to-wear sustainable fashion brand.

“The brand uses storytelling to ask me questions of who we were, who we are as Africans and who we have the possibility of becoming, informed by critical research and plurality of the African experience, the work moves between the past, the present, and the future, using fashion as a space for African for memory, imagination, and new propositions for identity and representation,” he said.

He also highlighted how Africa is intrinsically “sustainable”, through the passing down of heirlooms. His father’s Zulu headdress, passed down from generation to generation, is an example of this.

“Clothing reminds us that design is never only about making new things. It is about recognising the sacredness of what has quietly endured,” he said.

“To make clothes is to create inheritance. To inherit an object is to inherit a conversation already in progress.

“It asks us to place our own memories gently beside those of our ancestors, adding another layer to its surface without erasing those who came before.

“And one day, when our names have faded from memory, the clothes, just like the wood, will remain, still carrying the warmth of our dreams, still waiting for another generation to rest their head upon history.”

While the world may look to the West for fashion, honing in on the different fashion weeks and collections, Africa has stood the test of time as leaders in sustainability.

“There was a time where the great fashion houses served as custodians of craft. This is no longer true,” he says.

“Protecting the hands, rituals, and knowledge that might otherwise have disappeared, within every stitch, weave, and carved surface lives generations of memory, reminding us that true luxury has always been measured not only by rarity but by the lives and the traditions it carried forward.”

Lepoto also highlighted his brand’s consulting work with larger companies like Adidas to integrate South African stories into global fashion, aiming to create a local, specific, and truthful future for African fashion.

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“For us, collaboration follows naturally from this way of thinking,” he said as he referred to his frequent collaborations with fellow South African designer Thebe Magugu.

“Our practice resists the mythology of the solitary designer, recognising instead that creativity is produced through conversation and exchange.

“Photographers, stylists, musicians, models, friends, and collaborators become part of an involving creative ecosystem.

“Collaboration is therefore less about combining names and more about allowing different perspectives to transform the work, making space for ideas that could not have existed in isolation,” he said.

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The way forward

Joining in online via Zoom was Lagos Fashion Week founder and Earthshot Prize winner Omoyemi Akerele, who challenged African sustainable fashion stakeholders to put their pen to paper and sign African Fashion Coalition’s newly unveiled manifesto.

“The coalition is you. The coalition is me. The coalition is all of us. Everyone who you know decides to sign this manifesto automatically becomes a part of the African Fashion Coalition,” said Akerele.

Titled the Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future, the manifesto exists as a roadmap for governments, businesses, investors, and everyday people, emphasising Africa’s historical practices of sustainability and circularity.

“We’re not just trying to catch up with global fashion or words in the global lexicon that’s been created around sustainability of the secular circular economy.

“It’s a manifesto that looks at the position that we have, as a continent, practised regenerative and secular fashion principles for generations, and our message is simple: Africa is leading the future of fashion, not following,” said Akerele.

The manifesto — based on 10 pillars that are what Akerele calls the DNA of what makes African fashion truly special — aims to strengthen local production, cultural heritage, and community-led creation.

Calling back to Lephoto’s emphasis on collaboration, she challenged the room filled with manufacturers and designers to collaborate, strengthen regional networks, and claim ownership of their knowledge and creativity.

The coalition is calling for collective action, including government policies, investor support, and designer collaboration to ensure that value is kept in Africa.

If you’d like to find out more about the manifesto, you can read it here and sign it here.