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Awa Tapsoba is a dyer based in Bobo-Dioulasso. When she left a five-day batik workshop in April 2026, she already knew what she would do next. ‘I plan to share what I learnt with people in financial difficulty,’ she says, ‘to improve their situation, and provide for my own family.’
Awa was one of ten artisans (six of them women) trained by Loraine Yaovi Nato, founder of LAAFA (Luxury African Fashion Fabrics), a textile and natural dyeing enterprise based in Ouidah, Benin. A former beneficiary of the ACP Business Friendly programme, Loraine travelled to Burkina Faso through the programme, funded by the European Union and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States.
Batik is a wax-resist dyeing technique practised across West Africa. A wooden block stamp is coated in hot wax and pressed onto fabric, preventing dye from reaching those areas. When the fabric comes out of the dye bath and the wax is removed, the pattern is revealed. Layers of wax and colour can build up complex multi-coloured designs, each one nearly unrepeatable by hand.
Over five days, Loraine taught batik through theory and hands-on practice, guiding participants through making their own motifs and finished lengths of fabric. She also created two original designs for the workshop, drawn from Burkina Faso’s own history and collective memory ‘to express, through textile, an identity that is living, rooted, and contemporary,’ she says.
The first, the Camel, speaks to the Sahel’s history. ‘The camel has a strong symbolism in the Sahelian regions of Burkina Faso,’ says Loraine. ‘Beyond its practical role, it symbolises resilience, patience and endurance, and the transmission of knowledge through caravans.’ Though not native to Burkina Faso, the camel arrived with nomadic peoples and trans-Saharan traders, becoming essential in the arid north.
The second, the Amazone du Faso, depicts a horse, a reference to the women of Burkina Faso Loraine calls ‘Amazones’: those who work the land, manage households, raise children and transmit traditional knowledge, often through crisis and hardship. ‘Today, the spirit of the Amazone du Faso lives in every woman who builds, creates, educates and contributes to society,’ says Loraine. ‘This motif symbolises quiet strength, dignity and African feminine power.’
This workshop is one of a series of cross-border training missions carried out this spring under the ACP Business Friendly programme. Read the other stories here.
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The Ethical Fashion Initiative is a programme of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.
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