Today, marula oil occupies a prominent place in global skincare. A star ingredient in brands sold at $72 a bottle, built on a myth about drunk elephants, named without ceremony. This shift raises questions about whose story travels when a plant does. As the oil crosses oceans, the rituals, the women, and the 10,000 years of relationship that shaped it tend to stay behind. The marula becomes a way to think about what extraction looks like when it is called luxury, and what it would mean to let the relationship ripen before reaching for the fruit.

Its history stretches across some of the oldest trade routes in the world. Frankincense and myrrh moved through maritime and caravan networks linking northern Somalia, Ethiopia, Oman, and the Fertile Crescent, forming what became known as the incense trade routes. Some historians consider frankincense among the first substances traded on a near-global scale. Its significance appears repeatedly throughout history, from Ancient Egyptian rituals and embalming practices to the gifts presented to Jesus by the three wise men. The resin was burned to perfume temples, homes, and clothing, while charred forms of aromatic resins were also incorporated into cosmetics such as kohl, the dark eye pigment associated with ancient Egyptian beauty practices. Later, the Roman Catholic Church adopted frankincense extensively in liturgical ceremonies, a practice that continues today.

Across these histories, frankincense moves between ritual, medicine, and commerce. The resin is still burned as incense, while its essential oil is used in perfumes, aromatherapy, and traditional healing practices. In Ethiopia, the resin may be chewed to strengthen gums, ingested for digestive ailments, applied to wounds, or inhaled to ease bronchitis. Many of these uses are tied to boswellic acids, compounds associated with anti-inflammatory effects. Yet the growing global demand for frankincense oil and resin has intensified harvesting beyond sustainable levels. Although some scientists argue the trees should only be tapped a few times annually, harvesting often occurs far more aggressively, leaving the species increasingly vulnerable. As the market for frankincense continues to expand, the balance between economic value and ecological survival grows more fragile.

Its story, however, reaches much further back. Poppies appear in the Ebers Papyrus of Ancient Egypt, linking the plant to early traditions of healing and care. While those records are often associated with the opium poppy, they reflect a broader recognition of the genus as a source of soothing and sedative properties. In contrast to its stronger relative, the common poppy has long been used in beauty rituals.

Particularly in Morocco through aker fassi, a red powder made from poppy petals and pomegranate bark. Here, the flower is transformed and used for various forms of care. Across these uses, the common poppy moves between field, medicine, and beauty, showing how even the most delicate plants can carry enduring forms of knowledge and care.

Mentioned links:

A guide to Morrocan rituals

Through palm oil, the text contrasts two parallel realities. One is industrial production shaped by colonial histories, deforestation, and global profit. The other is traditional African practices rooted in culture, and community use. What is often treated as a single harmful product is revealed to have multiple identities, depending on how and where it is produced.

Tracing the plant’s movement from West and Central Africa to Southeast Asia, the piece highlights how control over land, labor, and resources shifted over time, reshaping both ecosystems and local autonomy. At the same time, it re-centers the oil palm as a versatile and nourishing plant, integral to food, medicine, and craft traditions such as African black soap.

As global narratives simplify palm oil into a symbol of environmental harm, this piece asks what is lost in that framing. It invites a more layered understanding, one that holds both accountability for large-scale systems and respect for localized knowledge, and questions whether collective action can move beyond the limits of individual choice.

The tree’s resilience and versatility have allowed it to travel widely, adapting to new environments while maintaining its role in local food systems. Every part of the plant is used, from nutrient-rich leaves to oil-producing seeds, reflecting a deep relationship between people and plant. Today, moringa occupies a new space in global markets, valued for its nutritional and cosmetic properties.

This shift raises questions about origin, ownership, and attention. As one variety becomes dominant in cultivation and commerce, others risk being overlooked. Moringa becomes a way to think about how knowledge moves, how plants are rebranded, and what is lost or preserved in the process.

We trace its origins to regions across Africa and Asia, with deep roots in ancient Egypt, where its presence in early medical texts and burial sites signals both utility and reverence. From there, the plant travels, carried through trade, migration, and enslaved peoples, embedding itself in new landscapes and traditions.

At the center of this story is transformation. The same seeds that contain ricin, one of the most toxic natural substances, are also the source of castor oil, a substance used for centuries to heal, nourish, and sustain. We explore how different processing methods, from cold pressing to the roasting techniques behind Jamaican black castor oil, turn something dangerous into something beneficial.

Alongside its medicinal and cosmetic uses, castor oil has played roles in industry, energy, and global trade. But its journey is also deeply human, tied to the movement of knowledge across the Atlantic, where enslaved Africans carried with them not just seeds, but practices of care and survival.

How do you explain that same person knowing your whole family, two, three generations deep?

How do you explain waking up one day to find your furniture gone, your clothes gone, your everything gone, and being forced to leave?

This is what British colonizers did to the Kikuyu on their land. This was not sudden. It was deliberate and intimate.

We often call it a land grab, or land theft. But those words feel too small, misdemeanors for something that was a deep betrayal. This was not just taking. It was an abuse of trust. An extension of hospitality turned inward, hollowing everything out. A gutting from the inside.

For years, I was led to believe that land across the continent was easily stolen because there were no written documents under Western legal systems. That same old debate, oral versus written, framed as if one must erase the other. And yes, many systems of land stewardship were/are held through oral tradition, through memory, and through community. But that was not the full story. And it was not the case for the Kikuyu.

In the film Kikuyu Land, we are taken to Kenya, where Kikuyu land theft was systematic and well-documented, with British colonizer forcibly removing communities who would not leave voluntarily, laying the foundation for today’s land disputes. And goes on to unpack the legacy of the theft.

The cinematography holds the lushness, the kind of place where, as we say in Bambara, “even your spit would grow.” Bea Wangondu, the investigative journalist whose story we follow, recalls being told as a little girl that after God finished creating the world, God returned to Kikuyu land to rest.

And yet, what sits in the foreground is violence, or as women on the land would say, “fertile but cursed [land].”

Violence against those whose land was taken.

Violence against those now working land that is no longer theirs.

Violence upheld by multinational corporations and government officials who benefit from that theft.

Those rolling hills, layered greens, morning mist, soft dew, became rolling tea monocultures. Plantations in a modern form. Managed, measured, extracted socially and ecologically.

The perpetrators of the system are field managers. Sites where women face sexual, physical, and mental abuse. Where they are forced into debt, into labor, into meeting daily quotas that feed a global production line. Where life itself becomes owned, where to live, how to think, how to behave are shaped by the system.

The monoculture does not stop at the land. It extends into the mind, for those forced to work the land and for those who consume its products.

This is the cost of the tea we drink, and many other cash crops such as shea butter and chocolate. Hidden supply chains. Hidden labor. Hidden lives.

The film traces a pipeline of power, linking corporations, government, and police. It shows how colonial structures did not disappear; they adapted. They became modern systems of control, corruption, and suppression, where journalists and activists are silenced. Those fighting for land back are silenced. Those fighting for women’s rights are silenced. Those fighting for children’s rights are silenced.

We also follow the life of Joseph, a young boy whose mother works on the plantations. His favorite nature story is about ants. He tells us that the queen ant is supported by the worker ants. To him, the workers are the most important.

I left the film feeling a deep mourning, but also a restlessness. A need to keep asking:

What are the different ways we are subdued?

What does it mean to inherit a monoculture of the mind?

Who is made invisible within the supply chains we rely on, women, children, entire communities?

How does mainstream media keep us distracted from being in community with each other?

What does honest work look like inside systems built on extraction?

And how, despite all of this, do we remain hopeful?

Maybe hope is not something given to us, but something we practice.

In refusing erasure.

In remembering differently.

In paying attention to what is hidden.

In choosing to be in relation with land, with people, with truth.

Maybe hope lives in the questions we refuse to stop asking.

In this episode, we explore the Gob tree in Somalia, known sidr in the Arab world, a plant rooted in East Africa but carried across continents, climates, and cultures. Growing in dry, arid landscapes, this thorny, resilient tree has long provided more than just shade: its fruit nourishes, its wood sustains, and its leaves transform into qasil, a gentle yet powerful cleansing ritual.

We trace how qasil is made and used, from daily skincare practices to bridal preparation, where it symbolizes purification and care. Alongside its practical uses, the tree holds deeper meaning. It appears in Christian narratives, Islamic traditions of healing, and African rituals marking both beginnings and endings.

It’s the story of a tree that exists across geographies and beliefs.

Henna’s story does not live only in written documents. It travels through oral traditions, through hands that grind leaves into paste, and through communities that have used it for healing.

For centuries, the henna plant has also been part of beautification rituals across North and West Africa. From medieval trade cities in Mauritania and Niger to wedding celebrations in Mali and Eid festivities across the Sahel, henna marks life’s important moments.

We also sit with the ritual itself. The slow process of applying henna. The geometric patterns created with tape in West African traditions. The waiting. The cooling paste. The deep maroon stain that appears hours later.

Along the way, I share my own experience receiving henna at my cousin’s wedding and reflect on how traditional practices are changing in a faster world, where chemical henna often replaces the slower methods that once defined the ritual.

Join us as we unpack beauty, patience, celebration, and the small moments of stillness that plants sometimes give us.

Some sources:

Lalle, Anella, and Fudden: Henna in West Africa

The Sacred Malian Henna Ceremony That Signifies the Transition From Girl to Woman

Its story stretches across North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, moving through deserts, riverbanks, gardens, and trade routes. A plant that appears in rituals of beauty and in the work of medicine.

Some of the earliest traces of henna appear in Ancient Egypt, where the plant was used to stain mummy wrappings and sometimes the hair of the deceased, leaving behind copper tones that have survived for thousands of years. In the Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest known medical texts, henna appears among hundreds of plant remedies and is prescribed for skin diseases, itching, wounds, and infections. Ancient physicians paid close attention to the plant’s chemistry, noting how soil conditions, moisture, and even the part of the plant harvested could influence its strength.

Islamic writings from the early centuries of Islam also describe henna as medicine and adornment. Reports recount the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ applying henna to wounds and using it to soothe headaches, reflecting practices that many healing traditions had already observed. Henna was valued for its antiseptic, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory qualities.

Join us as we explore henna not only as adornment, but as medicine.

Its trail appears in ancient botanical records of Egypt and Mesopotamia, where seeds were prepared with the products of the hive such as honey, propolis, and royal jelly to create medicines for both body and skin. Seeds found resting in the tomb of Tutankhamun remind us that some plants were considered worthy companions even in death.

We sit with black seed as food and medicine. Toasted into breads across the Middle East, stirred into pickles and spice blends in South Asia, its flavor lemony, bitter, and warm. Its oil is pressed for remedies that support the immune system, soothe digestion, and calm the skin. Within Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) described it as a remedy for every illness except death, a statement that shaped how generations approached this humble seed.

Join us as we consider black seed not simply as spice or supplement, but as testimony, a small dark seed carrying centuries of medicine, devotion, and human curiosity.

Its story echoes rice, seeds braided into hair for survival, yet okra does not need to live in rice’s shadow. Its lineage begins in Ethiopia and the Nile Basin, moves through West Africa, and crosses the Atlantic in the hairs of enslaved people who ensured its survival in unfamiliar soil.

We sit with okra as food and medicine. Harvested young before it hardens. Eaten stewed and viscous across West Africa, fried crisp in India, simmered into Egyptian kitchens long before tomatoes arrived. Its mucilage, that slippery, gelatinous substance, soothes digestion and thickens soups. Its seeds have stood in for coffee. Its pods hold vitamins K and C, and manganese.

nāfolo gathers stories of seeds that map movement across continents, kitchens, and cosmetic labs. Rooted in ecology, language, trade, and care, it is a living archive of plant consciousness and the people who carry it.

Join us as we consider okra not as slime or side dish, but as testimony, green-tipped evidence of where we have been and where we continue to grow.

In this episode of nāfolo, we trace the baobab (Adansonia digitata) across landscape and lineage — from the fruit (bouye) and the leaves (lalo) to soap, bark, and oil — and consider how its meanings shift when translated into global skincare. What happens when tradition enters commerce? What does it mean to center African botanicals in a market that often wants the culture without the people?

This is a meditation on trees, beauty, memory, and the space where heritage meets industry.

Business Insider video mentioned in the podcast. Why Eat African Shea Butter Is Expensive.

Then came the backlash around calling the halftime show “liberation.” The critique holds weight. Can we truly speak of liberation in a hyper-capitalist space? Can we call something liberatory when the Super Bowl’s primary function during the halftime show is to commodify black and latinx culture?

But at the core of it all, I think we can hold two truths. One: there was an immense amount of joy watching this halftime show that was so intentionally curated from the people who participated to the symbolism. Two: we cannot ignore that these stages are intrinsically tied to the commodification of black and latinx bodies & cultures therefore have limitations. Nonetheless for liberation to take effect, we need the critical mass.

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While most people focused on the music, the spectacle, who got married or didn’t, I was pulled towards the backdrop: sugarcane and plantains. Cash crops that have left entire islands in deeper poverty than imaginable. Cash crops that opened the gates to the enslavement of Africans, carrying them across the Atlantic. Neither sugarcane nor plantain is indigenous to the African continent, yet their histories are inseparable from Africa and its diaspora.

Sugarcane’s relationship to slavery has been widely discussed, how something once used to make rum for enslaved people was later co-opted by wealthy slave owners and rendered inaccessible. Rum is a cautionary tale: the co-opting of culture, the packaging of exploitation as pleasure, the illusion of liberation.

I don’t want to rehash that story. I want to focus on plantain.

When we talk about plants, I’m learning that origin is only half the story. The other half is about who carried them, who cultivated them, and who made them matter. Plantain (Musa paradisiaca) is native to Southeast Asia and made its way to Africa through trade with East Africa. Enslaved Africans then played a crucial role in introducing and establishing plantains in Puerto Rico in the 16th century, carrying them via the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Caribbean. While Spanish explorers may have brought the initial plants, it was enslaved Africans who cultivated them, popularized them, and transformed them into staple foods, reshaping the island’s culinary landscape.

The story of plantain echoes that of black rice in the Americas. In previous pieces, I’ve written about rice being braided into black hair, carried as sustenance and survival. These foods mattered. Alongside okra, rice, beans, yams, and manioc, plantains became essential not only to survival but to the export-driven economies of Puerto Rico and the wider Caribbean, economies built on African labor.

But the plantain’s story runs even deeper.

In In the Shadow of Africa: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World, Judith Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff argue that it was likely not a friar, but Africans who spread plantains widely throughout the Caribbean. The expansion of plantains mirrored the expansion of slavery itself. In the 15th century, plantains moved with Africans from West Africa to Portuguese and Spanish sugar islands. By the 16th century, they had reached the Caribbean with enslaved Africans. Regardless of who first planted them, it was Africans who provided the critical mass, the agricultural knowledge, labor, and continuity, that gave plantains their lasting relevance in the Americas.

Much of this evidence is circumstantial, largely because Spanish and Portuguese colonizers did not document the innovations of enslaved Africans. Still, Carney and Rosomoff note that European traffickers often provisioned slave ships with African foods, believing it was better to feed people what they already knew. Once plantains were planted, on plantations or in personal garden plots, enslaved Africans drew on existing agricultural expertise to cultivate them, alongside millet, rice, yams, and manioc. Maroon communities further reinforce this history, having sustained themselves through the cultivation of both well-known and lesser-known African crops. Today, many of these plants still grow wild in the Caribbean and Brazil, a living botanical archive of Africa in the Americas.

Plantain mirrors that, it was most likely brought by the colonizers to feed the enslaved people but the enslaved peoples were the critical mass that made it culture. Much like tracing plants across the continents, liberation is messy.

We were far from the red Sahelian soil that so often aches across the landscape, and closer to a mix of dark black earth and white sand. Unfamiliar terrain for a Sahelian babe, but reassuring for someone who enjoys land and soil. What I found there were the shea parks I had grown up running through, the ones that so generously gave us their fruit.

What surprised me most were the saplings scattered across the fields.

In a territory where deforestation has become rampant, and where the growth time of a shea tree is long and demanding, this sight felt almost improbable. Especially when set against the reality of deforestation in West Africa.

I am annoyed at myself. It dawned on me last week that I have an obsession with the “female narrative” attached to plants, and I tend to gravitate toward those plants and overly highlight them. The idea that women are the gatekeepers of culture and tradition is one I often return to. And yes, it is true in many contexts, and true for many plants.

But it bothers me.

What if everyone was the gatekeeper of plant culture and traditions? Would we be faced with less deforestation? Why does one side of the population carry the responsibility for the well being of important plants? What if we were all stewards?

The shea tree, Vitellaria paradoxa, is disappearing at an alarming rate. Over 8 million trees are lost every year. Charcoal production, agricultural expansion, and urban growth are the main drivers of this destruction. Beyond the environmental cost, this loss threatens the livelihoods of millions of women who rely on what is often called “women’s gold.”

Charcoal and fuelwood demand lead to illegal and premature cutting of shea trees. Expanding agriculture converts savannah woodlands into large scale farms and grazing land, shrinking shea parklands. Climate change adds further pressure through droughts, erratic rainfall, and rising temperatures that slow growth and reduce fruit production. The socio economic consequences are severe, as fewer trees mean fewer nuts and less income for those who depend on them.

And yet, in my research, I found that Ghana has made notable progress in shea conservation and regeneration.

That knowledge sits quietly beside the image of those young saplings in Dialakoroba. A reminder that decline is not inevitable, and that stewardship, when shared, can still take root.

Extra links:

La filière karité en Afrique de l’Ouest - Programme Équité

Shea Heroes: Women Fighting to Preserve Africa’s Iconic Trees

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This isn’t to say I had never planted anything before. I have vivid memories of my father and I starting a small garden in our front yard in Rwanda. We grew watermelon, and I remember being completely fascinated by the way the plant climbed. One of those core memories that sticks. But by the time I finished my master’s, that version of me felt very far away.

So it only felt right to return to the earth.

These are the three farms that changed my life, or rather, the three farms that solidified this path for me. I volunteered on all of them.

1. Monastère Notre Dame de Bonne-Espérance

(Echourgnac, France)

I chose this farm for the simplest reason. I saw a YouTube video where someone said that if you ever had to choose just one farm to visit, it should be this one. Decision made.

As a Black woman, I think twice about where I travel. Will I be welcomed? Will I be stigmatized? Religious spaces sometimes feel safer, though to be fair, it’s always a gamble and you hope for the best. My confidence grew when I heard Sister Elise Mariette say they accept everyone.

My arrival in Echourgnac was hectic. I landed in Paris after a couple of weeks in Mali with a phone that barely worked. I had to switch quickly to a spare phone I was lucky to have with me, one that didn’t take pictures. So I have no photos from those two weeks, except the ones my fellow volunteers took. I took the train to Echourgnac, where I was picked up alongside other volunteers, including a Muslim couple living in Paris at the time.

How freeing it was to live with the sisters and follow their rhythm, each day punctuated by several prayers marking the birth and death of Christ. The sisters dressed modestly, heads covered and loose-fitting clothes. It reminded me so much of Islam, the rhythm of prayer throughout the day and the modesty. I felt deeply at ease. I had space to pray, and I was also invited to participate in some of their rituals.

In between prayers, we tended the gardens or chatted with the sisters who made jam from the harvest and cheese from the milk. All of this happened at the top of a mountain, with the forest as a backdrop. One exceptional day, they opened their private quarters to us and we helped with tasks inside. How exceptional it was to witness balance between the spiritual and the physical. How exceptional it was to see that something I had yearned for so deeply was, in fact, possible.

2. Pàmies Vitae

(Balaguer, Spain)

I spent three months here.

I don’t even know where to begin.

A longer stay was essential on this journey, mainly because I finally got to understand plants by repetition. I planted hundreds of seeds and watched them return as seedlings. I repotted, replanted, transplanted, again and again, day in and day out.

All of this happened under the watchful eye of my “work dad,” Aziz, a generous Moroccan man. He spoke Spanish and Arabic. I spoke English, French, and Bambara, and I was brushing up on my Spanish. We met each other halfway and landed on generosity and understanding.

He would bring bread his wife baked for me. Later, he invited me to his home to meet his family. I felt held throughout the learning process, held by people, by routine, by the land.

3. My Uncle’s Farm

(Bamako, Mali)

Perhaps my favorite thing about some of the organic farms I’ve visited in Mali is this. While their neighbors have cut down nearly all their trees, these farmers have maintained theirs and planted even more.

My uncle’s farm is one of those places.

An absolute oasis, especially as desertification and deforestation continue moving further south. He has hectares and hectares of citrus trees. As we walked through the farm, he picked fruit straight from the trees and handed it to me.

Around lunchtime, we returned to the center of the farm to share one of my favorite meals to this day, peanut and moringa stew with guinea fowl, served with yellow corn couscous. Everything came from the farm. To crown the experience, he sent us off with pasteurized milk.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I was only there for a day, but by the end of it, I didn’t want to leave. I dreaded returning to the city, where there were fewer trees and the air felt heavier, less fresh.

The way I was treated, and the plants I was in communion with, reaffirmed the power of community rooted in land, and how it heals and frees us spiritually, physically, and emotionally. It is this understanding of land through plants, people, and place that makes me a better host for nāfolo. My learning journey is far from finished, but I look forward to reflecting what I have learned in this new season of nāfolo called keneya (health in bambara).

And so I wonder, which places have changed you the most?

What became clear early on is that while the story of cotton in Mali and Burkina Faso was deeply shaped by French colonial policy, the trajectories in Ghana and Nigeria were shaped differently under British rule. These differences mattered. They influenced not only how cotton was cultivated, but how cloth was valued, produced, and circulated, and ultimately how cotton settled into everyday life in both countries (Roberts 1996; Bassett 2001).

When I think of cotton in Ghana and Nigeria, I think less of a single fabric and more of a conversation. A conversation between forest and savanna, between strip looms and expansive wrappers, between local systems of knowledge and imperial economies that sought to reorder them.

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cotton then

Long before colonial borders hardened the map, cotton circulated across the regions that are now Ghana and Nigeria through trade routes linking the Niger basin, the forest belt, and the Sahel. Cotton fiber and cloth moved alongside kola nuts, salt, and leather goods, embedding themselves in systems of exchange that were already centuries old (Picton and Mack 1992).

In what is now southern Ghana, cotton weaving existed alongside raffia and imported silk. Among Akan-speaking peoples, cloth functioned as a visual and social language. While silk carried elite ceremonial value, cotton formed the basis of everyday and ritual dress. Narrow-strip weaving techniques, later associated with kente, relied heavily on cotton, especially before imported silk threads became more widely available (Ross 2008).

In present-day Nigeria, cotton was equally central but took on different forms. Yoruba weavers developed aso oke, traditionally woven from locally grown cotton, sometimes blended with other fibers. Among Yoruba women, indigo-dyed adire transformed plain cotton cloth into complex patterned surfaces using resist techniques that required chemical knowledge, time, and intergenerational transmission (Picton and Mack 1992; Clark 1999).

In both regions, cotton cloth marked life’s thresholds. It wrapped infants, accompanied initiation and marriage, and honored the dead.

Under British administration, the Gold Coast economy was structured primarily around cocoa rather than cotton. British industrial interests prioritized the import of finished textiles from Manchester, flooding local markets with factory-produced cloth. This policy undercut local weaving, positioning cloth as something to be bought rather than made, and shifting cotton from a cyclical local system into a disrupted one (Roberts 1996).

Nigeria followed a slightly different path. The British Cotton Growing Association actively promoted cotton cultivation in northern Nigeria, viewing the region as a potential supplier of raw fiber for British mills. Cotton production expanded, particularly in Hausa areas, but processing and textile manufacturing remained external. Raw cotton moved outward. Finished cloth flowed back in (Bassett 2001).

The distinction is subtle but important. In both Ghana and Nigeria, British policy discouraged the development of local textile industries. Unlike the French, who aggressively pushed cotton as a colonial cash crop while still exploiting African labor locally, the British emphasized extraction and import dependency. Cotton remained present, but fragmented from its full life cycle.

cotton as quiet resistance

Despite these disruptions, cotton-based textile traditions endured.

In Ghana, kente survived colonial pressure and later became a symbol of national identity. After independence in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah intentionally wore kente during public appearances and diplomatic engagements, using cloth as a visual assertion of sovereignty and continuity with precolonial authority (Ross 2008).

In Nigeria, adire experienced cycles of decline and revival. Imported wax prints and factory cloth threatened its survival, yet women dyers continued to adapt motifs and techniques. Aso oke remained central to Yoruba ceremonial life, resisting replacement precisely because it carried meanings that imported cloth could not replicate (Picton and Mack 1992).

In both contexts, women were central. They spun, dyed, sold, and sustained cotton culture even when colonial and postcolonial economies offered little structural support.

cotton today

Today, cotton in Ghana and Nigeria exists in a state of tension.

There is renewed interest in indigenous textiles among designers, artists, and cultural workers. Kente, aso oke, and adire appear in contemporary fashion and global markets, often reframed as heritage or luxury. Yet the material foundations remain fragile. Local cotton farming is limited. Textile labor is undervalued. Fast fashion and secondhand imports dominate markets, often made from cotton grown and processed elsewhere.

Unlike Mali and Burkina Faso, where cotton remains a central agricultural export, Ghana and Nigeria face a different condition. Cotton culture persists, but cotton sovereignty is incomplete.