A new coalition is challenging African fashion to turn its long traditions of repair, reuse and community production into a modern industrial strategy that keeps more jobs, knowledge and economic value on the continent.
The most important collection at this year's Lagos Fashion Week will not be on the runway. Organisers will use Africa's largest and most influential fashion event to launch a continent-wide blueprint to encourage the industry to embrace regenerative fashion.
Lagos Fashion Week is a multi-day fashion week held in Lagos, Nigeria. Founded in 2011 by Omoyemi Akerele, Lagos Fashion Week is a leading transformative movement. By placing circularity, craft-driven innovation, and community development at its core, they are tackling fashion's biggest issue of overproduction and overconsumption.
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"When Lagos Fashion Week launched in 2011, it started as a vision to show the capability, or the capacity, of what fashion can do when we're looking at it through the lens of socioeconomic development, preservation of skills or cultural heritage that's been passed down from generation to generation, and the wider impact that that can obviously have on the environment, culture and creative economies," said Akerele.
That vision was shaped by what Akerele had observed in Nigeria's fashion industry, where she had worked as a fashion editor.
"Prior to that, at least in Nigeria, where I'm based, fashion was perceived as entertainment. It was more geared towards people coming together, dressing up really nicely, to just go and watch this performance, also described as a fashion show. And so, coming into all of that with a background and looking around and understanding that if we could perhaps put a bit more structure to this. If we could galvanise the industry to come together, I naively thought that a Fashion Week could solve some of the problems I'd seen working as a fashion editor in the industry."
In 2025 Lagos Fashion received the Earthshot Prize under the "Build a Waste-Free World" category for its transformative work in building a sustainable and ethical African fashion industry.
What is regenerative fashion?
Regenerative fashion is a holistic approach to clothing that aims to restore and revitalise ecosystems and communities throughout the entire life cycle of a garment.
"Regenerative fashion is asking, how do we create good? How do we create a version of fashion that is less extractive, one that restores landscapes, and one that strengthens communities? It revitalises indigenous knowledge, creates secular economies naturally, and recognises all of these competing priorities to be mutually reinforcing and balanced," explains Akerele.
In practice, regenerative fashion can mean working with locally grown natural fibres, reviving traditional weaving and dyeing techniques, supporting small artisan communities, designing products for repair and reuse, reducing dependence on imported materials and building supply chains that benefit both people and ecosystems.
"Fashion begins with what comes from the land, from your cotton, to natural dyes, to natural fibers, that you have a lot of across the African continent. That's dependent on biodiversity, natural biodiversity across the continent, and what happens is this is brought to life by people. This is when you introduce people into the equation, from your artisans. Designers who work with the artisans within an ecosystem that brings this into designs and collections that you see on catwalks around the world.'' Akerele explains.
"However, what makes it truly special is that a lot of livelihoods depend upon this process, and therefore, it's very, very important that there is a balanced understanding that if either the land is depleted, or the people are not well compensated, the whole system ultimately fails. So it's looking at it through the lens of that wider understanding, that advocates for a system that's more regenerative as opposed to just sustainable," she added.
Building Africa's Fashion Sector
The UNESCO report "The African Fashion Sector: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth" notes 37 of Africa's 54 countries grow cotton with the continent's biggest producers concentrated in West Africa. Yet, African textile industries remain underdeveloped.
This underdevelopment is reflected in Africa's trade patterns. In 2022 Africa exported about $15.5 billion of textiles (cotton, yarns, and fabrics) but imported $23.1 billion of finished clothing and footwear. One estimate even puts Africa's annual loss from re-importing its own raw materials at roughly $8 billion (selling raw fibers cheaply and buying back finished goods). For example, West African countries together produce about one million tons of cotton per year, but 98% of it is exported in raw form.
According to the International Trade Centre (ITC), in 2022, while African cotton fibre production accounted for 7.5% of global production, sub-Saharan countries exported more than 81% of the raw cotton they produced rather than transforming and using it locally.
As UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay puts it, policymakers must empower designers with legal protections and invest in SMEs (which are 90% of Africa's fashion businesses). Otherwise Africa will remain a supplier of raw materials and know-how, while others profit from the high-end.
The Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future
The African Fashion Coalition launched the Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Week at the Mills Fabrica during London Climate Week on 22 June 2026. The manifesto exists as a roadmap for governments, businesses, investors, and everyday people, emphasising Africa's historical practices of sustainability and circularity.
The manifesto is based on 10 pillars that are what Akerele calls the DNA of what makes African fashion truly special.
"If we all come together to define that DNA and share it with the world, we can reveal more of who we are and show that the African approach to designing, creating and producing fashion is inherently regenerative because it begins with culture."
Together they call for fashion to protect cultural heritage, embed circularity into production, strengthen community-led businesses, safeguard intellectual property, demand accountability for textile waste, expand local manufacturing, support climate-responsive innovation, improve market access, invest in infrastructure and encourage more conscious consumption.
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The principles are rooted in African realities rather than imported sustainability models.
Instead of measuring success only by recycled fibres or lower carbon emissions, the Blueprint asks whether fashion strengthens indigenous craftsmanship, keeps value within African economies and gives communities greater control over production.
On 28 October-1 November 2026, the lasting legacy of Lagos Fashion Week may not be remembered for a single collection but for a manifesto that challenged the industry to rethink what success looks like. If the Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future gains traction, Africa could move beyond supplying raw materials to leading a global movement that values restoration as much as innovation.
Akerele says the work is ultimately about driving change rather than building a legacy.
"We don't do the work we do because we're focused on trying to leave a legacy. We're working because there's so much to be done, and if in the process we make an impact, absolutely fantastic. But can we just drive change? Can we just see the change in our lifetime? That would just be magnificent."
You can read the manifesto here: https://lagosfashionweek.ng/cms-assets/African-Fashion-Coalition-The-Blueprint-for-a-Regenerative-Fashion-Future_-FULL-V-.docx.pdf
