Kwetu Kwanza 2025: Over 4,000 Gather in Uganda for Circular Fashion at Nyege Nyege
East Africa's leading sustainable fashion festival concludes its sixth edition with record attendance and cross-festival dialogue on creative resistance.
Kwetu Kwanza 2025 drew over 4,000 visitors on Saturday, November 22, with thousands more attending across its four-day run at Kalagala Falls. Held in partnership with Nyege Nyege Festival’s 10th anniversary celebration, the event brought together circular fashion and underground African sound traditions in what both festivals describe as a shared commitment to community-led creativity.
The collaboration positioned fashion practice alongside performances by Skrillex, Flowdan, Mr. Silverback, Arsenal Mikebe, and DJ Travella at the Portal Stage. Nyege Nyege’s championing of underground sound traditions—including singeli, Acholitronix, Kadodi, Gengetone, Benga, Gqom, Congotekno, and Balani Show—ran parallel to Kwetu Kwanza’s focus on natural, upcycled, and indigenous fashion materials, from barkcloth and raffia to turmeric-dyed textiles and repurposed plastics.
Built from the Ground
This year’s exhibition was staged inside a Karamojong-inspired manyatta, built from bamboo, branches, hay, mud, cow dung, raffia, and dried banana leaves. The village comprised 15 huts, each housing a different designer with two signature pieces on display and a rack of ready-to-wear garments for sale. The structure honored the Karamojong’s ecological knowledge and relationship with natural materials.
Kwetu Kwanza showcased 13 designers in the exhibition and over 15 in the marketplace, offering one of the most diverse gatherings of circular fashion talent in the region.
Programming and Performance
The festival opened with a collaborative demonstration by Turkish weaver Saba Arat and Ugandan designer Maganda Shakul, presenting their sound-responsive textile installation “Resonant Threads.” Later, performers staged a deconstructed runway with live percussion by Kakuma Sounds Collective.
Friday concluded with a curated film screening by Hannah Allchurch, including the Ugandan premiere of “The Resurgence of Lubugo” in partnership with Matatu Film Festival. Saturday featured hands-on workshops: natural dyeing with Titus Nartey Gakpe of Calcul Studios and traditional barkcloth production with Ssekibuule Elvis, using Mutuba bark sourced locally.
Radical Gatherings: Building from the Margins
A key moment was the conversation “Radical Gatherings: Community, Collaboration, and Creative Resistance in Africa,” featuring Sammy Oteng (OWO Festival, Ghana), Katende Godfrey (Kwetu Kwanza), and Derek Debru (Nyege Nyege), moderated by Cynthia Mwangi.
Speakers explored the realities of organizing from the margins and the role of community-led creativity. Sammy Oteng emphasized the principle of community first—ensuring vendors, tailors, and upcyclers speak for themselves rather than being spoken for. He described how celebration becomes resistance, exemplified by OWO Festival’s origins inside Kantamanto Market.
Kwetu Kwanza and Nyege Nyege share this approach: pooling resources to support artists and communities often overlooked. The gathering of designers from Ghana, Kenya, and across Uganda built toward what organizers describe as essential solidarity for those working on the frontlines of Africa’s textile-waste crisis. Katende highlighted circularity as inherent to Ugandan cultural history, predating its current status as a global sustainability framework.
From discussions on barter systems to prioritizing local vendors and gifting exhibition huts back to the community, Kwetu Kwanza 2025 demonstrated what organizers call grassroots organizing, cultural preservation, and circular design as foundations of Africa’s creative infrastructure.