It was a privilege to attend the fifth edition of the
@GroupEcobank Adire Lagos Experience, themed Threads Across Borders, at the Ecobank Pan African Centre in Victoria Island, Lagos, where more than one hundred artisans, designers and creative entrepreneurs gathered to honour Adire as a living expression of Yoruba heritage and a craft now carried with confidence across the continent.
Nigeria's fashion economy is valued at more than $6.1 billion and supports over 2.1 million young people in work, while
@UNESCO estimates that Africa's wider creative industries could generate more than 20 million jobs and $20 billion in annual revenues under the right conditions. Adire, the indigo dyed cloth rooted in Egbaland, sits at the heart of that opportunity as both cultural inheritance and economic asset.
At the
@WellbeingAfrica Foundation, I have long held that the wellbeing of women and the prosperity of their communities advance together, and the women who dye, pattern and trade Adire are among the clearest illustrations of that truth, turning skill and heritage into household income, dignity and the means to invest in the health and education of their children.
I commend
@Ecobank_Nigeria for sustaining a platform that places our artisans before wider markets, and I add my voice to the call for coordinated national support through access to credit, structured training and the protection of indigenous designs as intellectual property, so that Adire takes its rightful place among the cultural exports through which Africa tells its own story to the world.
#AdireLagos #F4D
#Fashion4Development
#ThreadsAcrossBorders
#CreativeEconomy
#WellbeingForAll
#MaternalMonday