Wanja Laiboni ’07 | KENYA
A F R I C A N H E R I TA G E M E E T S
AFRICAN RAW MATERIALS Wanja Laiboni ’07 left a successful career in international development to found a sustainable luxury fashion brand that is 100% African. She explains how, by harnessing Africa’s rich cultural heritage and raw materials, she has built a global brand.
Questions without satisfactory answers will sometimes precede our most daring endeavors as we search for convincing answers. My longterm interest in the Global South and the humanities led me into a career in international development. Close to ten years in, I increasingly grappled with questions about whether my work was contributing to sustainable solutions. Did existing systems grant true sovereignty to the Global South and foster an environment of equal exchange? Was aid the best way to achieve sustainable development? While contemplating these questions, I traveled extensively around Africa, during which time I witnessed the abundance of the continent’s 11
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cultural assets and valuable raw materials. Additional questions took root: why had Africa not fully tapped the enormous economic potential of its cultural riches and raw materials to create global brands purveying high-value cultural goods made with Africasourced materials? This was especially curious considering Africa’s critical role in the raw material supply chains of global manufacturing. Ultimately, I came to the personal conclusion that, while humanitarian assistance is essential in times of war and natural disasters, creating equitable businesses that also generate social, environmental and cultural gains was the Global South’s fastest route to sustainable economic
development. In my search for answers, I went from being an international development and humanitarian assistance professional to founding SIWWAA, a luxury fashion company whose mission is to harness the true value of Africa’s cultural heritage and raw materials. A 2015 Ernst & Young–UNESCO joint report on the world’s creative and cultural industries, which generated $2.25 trillion that year, ranked Africa as the continent with the least economic contribution to these industries – despite possessing rich cultural assets that consistently inspire creative projects around the world. The factors curtailing the continent’s ability to create economically viable creative and cultural industries are
