The mopani worm is one of Southern Africa’s most familiar food sources. It is also, if you were in the room at Workshop17 in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront on 31 July 2026, one of the most interesting textile innovation arguments currently being made on the continent. Mopani worm silk is one of several unconventional fibres whose commercial and technical potential was put under examination at the sixth edition of Africa Textile Talks – alongside fish leather, hemp, kelp, banana fibre and kombucha-grown bacterial cellulose, among others. None of these is the material future of African textiles in itself. Together, they describe a conversation moving beyond conventional sustainability framing and toward harder questions about who owns African textile infrastructure, where value lands, and what regeneration actually requires.
Africa Textile Talks is convened annually by Twyg, an independent South African fashion and sustainability media platform founded by Jackie May, in collaboration with Imiloa Collective. The 2026 edition was its sixth, and its theme – post-extraction regeneration: Creating African Textile Futures – is worth parsing. ‘Post-extraction’ is specific language. It names the current condition: African textiles and raw materials are processed, marketed, and valued predominantly outside the continent, with the resulting economic benefit not flowing back to the communities, farmers, and weavers whose knowledge and labour produced the raw material. In this framing, regeneration is not a synonym for sustainable. It is the systemic alternative to that extraction model.
Africa Textile Talks 2026 brought designers, makers, researchers, policymakers and industry leaders to Cape Town to examine regenerative African textile futures. This is a full account of what was discussed, who won the student challenge and what the event adds to the conversation about African material innovation.
What the Two Days Covered
Day one at Workshop17 focused on the structural challenges: the cheap import problem, the informal trading economy, local manufacturing, policy and value chain development. The informal trading panel was one of the most noted conversations of the event. Rather than positioning informal markets as a threat to local manufacturing – the conventional framing – the panel asked what established industries could learn from the resilience, networks and adaptability already operating within these communities. Tanya Zack, author of *The Chaos Precinct* and a researcher of informal economies, was on the panel alongside Johanna von Pezold, a China-Africa researcher; Harald Harvey, chair of the Localisation Support Fund; Marthie Raphael, CEO of Pep Clothing; and Jackie May as moderator. Fashion Editor Tandekile Mkize described the discussion as opening “a new avenue of thinking” around how informal networks might provide a blueprint for rebuilding a more resilient local clothing sector.
Omoyemi Akerele, an Earthshot Prize winner, delivered the opening keynote and presented a Sustainable African Fashion Manifesto. Other confirmed Day 1 voices included Simone Smit, Director of Africa: The Earthshot Prize; Vuyiswa Mkhabela, development economist and strategist; Lumko Mboyi, conservation ecologist; Dr Natasja Ambrosio, Sustainability Director at Mr Price Group; and textile academic Siwa Mgoboza. Wanda Lephoto, one of South Africa’s most significant designers, also contributed to the programme.
Day two shifted toward material innovation and futures. Shaakira Jassat, a biomaterials innovator, presented alongside artist and researcher Thulile Gamedze, circular economy researchers Berendje Willemina and Nkhensani Mkari, and sustainability consultant Zara Odu. Hemp fibre, fish leather, mopani worm silk, mohair, wool and cotton were all put through their arguments in the interactive Textile Challenge – a format in which advocates for each fibre make their case before the audience votes for a winner. This deliberate format choice makes the material comparison an active exercise rather than a passive presentation, and it keeps the question of which fibres deserve investment in African textile futures open for debate.
The Future Fabrics Student Challenge
The most discussed outcome of Africa Textile Talks 2026 was the inaugural Future Fabrics Student Challenge, which invited emerging designers, makers and thinkers from across Africa to develop experimental textile samples exploring regenerative materials, indigenous knowledge and production systems that could move African textiles beyond the extraction model. Fourteen finalists presented 30cm by 30cm experimental samples. The material range was striking: sunflower stems, banana fibre, beach lily, wool, mohair, agricultural waste, recycled plastics, kombucha- grown bacterial cellulose, and reclaimed materials.
The future of African textiles does not only depend on producing ‘more sustainable’ materials. It depends on asking who owns the infrastructure, who benefits from production, whose knowledge is valued and where economic value ultimately lands. – CEC, reflecting on Africa Textile Talks 2026
The winner was Kelechi Memeh, a designer based in Lagos, Nigeria. Kelechi’s entry, which she called Latex-tile, is an experimental biodegradable textile made from natural liquid latex hibiscus and waste fabric. What makes the innovation notable in the context of this event goes beyond the material novelty. It directly addresses one of the most persistent structural challenges facing African textile production: the lack of midstream infrastructure for spinning, weaving, and dyeing, which means manufacturers across much of the continent remain dependent on imported textiles. By working with locally sourced natural latex, experimenting with hibiscus dyes, and embedding Ankara fabric, Latex-tile proposes a material system that retains more value within the local economy rather than exporting the raw material and reimporting it as finished textile.
A winner from Lagos in an innovation challenge convened in Cape Town is worth noting. It positions the student challenge not as a South African textile event that includes the rest of the continent but as a continental one. Kelechi’s win is the most concrete individual outcome of Africa Textile Talks 2026, and it connects directly to the event’s central question about who gets to participate in shaping African textile futures.
What Jackie May Said About Why It Matters
For Jackie May, the value of Africa Textile Talks is ultimately about building relationships as much as exchanging ideas. The event has evolved from an online gathering into an in-person meeting point where people can encounter materials, fibres and one another directly. ‘Attendees can see and feel fibres and fabrics,’ she explained, while people from different parts of the value chain form connections in the spaces between formal sessions. Reflecting on the 2026 edition, she offered what is probably the event’s clearest statement of intent: ‘We must buy locally manufactured garments and textiles. Our approach to this sector is pan-African, so local includes “Made in Africa” clothes. We want cotton farmers in Mali and weavers in Nigeria, as well as garment workers in Durban factories and designers in Cape Town, to thrive.’
That sentence does a lot of work. It is placing cotton farmers in Mali and weavers in Nigeria in the same sentence as garment workers in Durban factories and designers in Cape Town. It says the textile value chain is one connected thing and that the sustainability of any part of it depends on what happens at every other part. That is not the standard sustainability framing in which a brand sources a certified material and markets the certification. It is a systemic argument about who should be thriving and what economic structures make that possible.
Fibres That Were in the Room
The fibre range on show at Workshop17 deserves its own accounting, because it is one of the event’s most concrete outputs. Putting mopani worm silk in the same room as kelp, fish leather, hemp, mohair and bacterial cellulose is not primarily a gesture toward novelty. It makes visible the material options that currently exist on the continent and asks which are worth developing into commercial textile supply chains with African ownership and African manufacturing.
Mopani worm silk is harvested from the cocoons of mopani worms (Gonimbrasia belina), which are themselves a food source across southern Africa. The silk has structural qualities that researchers are exploring for textile applications. Fish leather is a by-product of the fish processing industry that several African producers are developing into commercial leather alternatives. Hemp has been in the conversation for several years as a fast-growing, low-input fibre crop, but Africa’s processing infrastructure is still limited. Bacterial cellulose grown from kombucha cultures is at the experimental end of the range but represents the kind of material innovation the student challenge was designed to surface.
What connects these fibres is not that they are all ready for commercial scale. Most of them are not. What connects them is that they are material resources that exist in African contexts and that, with appropriate infrastructure investment and knowledge development, could underpin textile production that is not dependent on imported raw materials. That is the regenerative argument: not that African textiles should adopt these fibres immediately, but that the conversation about what African textile futures look like should include them systematically rather than leaving them as peripheral novelties.
The African Fashion Coalition Blueprint
Africa Textile Talks 2026 is connected to a wider document circulating in the African fashion and textile space: The Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future, developed by the African Fashion Coalition. The Blueprint’s ten pillars – African ownership, local production, cultural heritage, circularity, community-led creation, waste justice, regenerative innovation, infrastructure, conscious consumption, and institutional support – provide a framework for what the regenerative textile future the event was describing would actually require at the policy and industry level. CEC’s reflection on the event explicitly invited readers to read and sign the Blueprint as a concrete action from the event’s conversations.
What the Session’s Cluster Adds
The provenance and claims cluster that Omiren Styles has been building this season examines textile heritage, maker credit, verification and material documentation from the Global South’s perspective. Africa Textile Talks 2026 sits in this cluster because it is asking the upstream version of the same questions. The provenance cluster asks: who is credited for the cloth that already exists? Africa Textile Talks 2026 asks: who will own and benefit from the new material systems being developed?
As Omiren Styles has established in its analysis of what textile provenance can and cannot prove, documentation frameworks are improving but remain insufficient to close the gap between material claims and verified maker value. The fibres being discussed at Workshop17 – mopani worm silk, fish leather, bacterial cellulose – are at a stage where the documentation frameworks have not yet been built, which is exactly the moment when the decisions about who owns the knowledge, who benefits from the scale-up and what the provenance record will contain are most available to be made well. Africa Textile Talks is one of the few events that makes that conversation happen before the infrastructure is locked.
African fashion has the creative quality, cultural authority, and international attention. The material base for a textile future that keeps value on the continent exists. What the Africa Textile Talks conversation is building incrementally is the case for why that future is worth investing in and what investment it would actually require. Kelechi Memeh’s Latex-tile, made in Lagos from natural latex, hibiscus and waste fabric, is a single answer to a very large question. The value of the challenge format is that it makes that single answer visible and gives it a room full of practitioners, policymakers and industry leaders to encounter it.
AFRICA TEXTILE TALKS 2026: AT A GLANCE
Sixth edition | 31 July – 1 August 2026 | Workshop17, V&A Watershed, Cape Town
Theme: Post-extraction regeneration: Creating African Textile Futures
Convened by: Twyg (Jackie May) in collaboration with Imiloa Collective
Opening keynote: Omoyemi Akerele (Earthshot Prize winner) – Sustainable African Fashion Manifesto
Fibres on show: Hemp, mopani worm silk, fish leather, kelp, wool, mohair, cotton, banana fibre, bacterial cellulose
Student Challenge finalists: 14 from across Africa
Winner: Kelechi Memeh (Lagos, Nigeria) – Latex-tile: biodegradable textile from natural latex, hibiscus and waste fabric
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Africa Textile Talks?
Africa Textile Talks is an annual two-day gathering convened by Twyg, an independent South African fashion and sustainability media platform founded by Jackie May, in collaboration with Imiloa Collective. It brings together designers, makers, researchers, manufacturers, artists, policymakers, students and industry leaders to examine the future of African textile and fashion systems. The 2026 edition was the sixth.
What was the theme of Africa Textile Talks 2026?
Post-extraction regeneration: Creating African Textile Futures. The theme positioned regeneration not as a sustainability trend but as a systemic alternative to the extraction model in which African raw materials are processed and valued predominantly outside the continent. The programme examined fibres, manufacturing, trade, cultural heritage, informal economies and material innovation as parts of one connected value chain. kombucha. Ucha-grown bacterial cellulose. The interactive Textile Challenge format put advocates for wool, hemp, mohair, cotton, linen and mopani worm silk before the audience to vote on which fibre deserved the strongest case for development.
What is the African Fashion Coalition Blueprint?
The Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future is a manifesto developed by the African Fashion Coalition. Its ten pillars – African ownership, local production, cultural heritage, circularity, community-led creation, waste justice, regenerative innovation, infrastructure, conscious consumption and institutional support – provide a framework for what a regenerative African textile and fashion future would require at the policy and industry level. Africa Textile Talks 2026 directed its attendees to read and sign the Blueprint as a post-event action.
Where are the Africa Textile Talks held?
Africa Textile Talks 2026 was held at Workshop17 in the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa, on 31 July and 1 August 2026. The event is a day-ticket format with student pricing available. The event has grown from an online gathering in its earlier editions into a physical meeting point where attendees can encounter materials and fibres directly, as well as meet people from different parts of the textile value chain.
