FASHION | AFRICA | NOW

PRESS CONFERENCE

PRESS CONFERENCE UNGERMAN – UNDEUTSCH Five Years After Black Lives Matter: What Has Truly Changed? Tap in to hear voices that are not waiting for a seat at the table - We are building new rooms, new runways, new businesses, new realities. It’s about ownership!  Five years after the global uprising under the banner of Black Lives Matter and in the heart of the UN Decade for People of African Descent, we pause to ask the urgent, uncomfortable, necessary question  What has truly changed? In this episode, recorded live during Fashion Africa Now’s third press conference, leading women of African descent from the creative industries and visionary business consultants — including Beatrace Oola, Kemi Fatoba, Meriem Lebdiri, Boitumelo Pooe, and Jacqueline Shaw — come together to reflect, reckon, and reimagine. The conversation is moderated by Prof. Marcellous Jones, with powerful written statements contributed by Dr. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka and Isi Ahmed.  We explore the deep fault lines that still define the German fashion scene: ✔️ Selective visibility.  ✔️ Token & Colorism inclusion.  ✔️ Structural exclusion masked as progress. Author Fatima El-Tayeb’s term UNGERMAN serves as a framework to unpack how racialized communities – especially Black people, Muslims, and Roma – continue to be treated as permanently foreign, while whiteness remains the silent standard of national identity. 🎧 Together, we ask: * Who gets to define African fashion? * Who profits from it – and who is systematically left out? * How can solidarity-based economies disrupt extractive systems? * What would real, structural investment in Black creatives in Germany look like? We don't need more symbolic gestures. It is time for redistribution, recognition, and radical imagination because fashion is more than fabric. It is memory. It is resistance. It encompasses the past, present, and future. Support the show [https://www.patreon.com/FANpodcast]

Picture And Reconstruct Me Different: Delphine Diallo

Enjoy the flow that Senegalese-born New York-based international known photographer, Delphine Diallo, releases as she liberally shares her journey of enlightenment; working as a talented graphic designer in the Parisian creative scene yet not able to get past the glass ceiling in the corporate art world. A climactic epiphany for change and a divinely orchestrated connection with the legendary Peter Beard saw her to collaborate on the Pirelli calendar shoot in Botswana. This turning point led to an awakening that saw her begin her own vision quest. Delphine describes herself as predominantly a student before a photographer, exploring realms of spirituality, science, anthropology and martial arts and shifting through the third, fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions, creating her own realities. Proud of her African origin and drawing from the power of her heritage, we hear how she engages with the energies of empowering black females and aims to accelerate levels of consciousness through her work. Known for portraiture and her focus on the black female body, Delphine is passionate about the reconstruction of the African woman and capturing the truth that is covered by the patriarchal white male gaze smokescreen that dominates the global visual language. Support the show [https://www.patreon.com/FANpodcast]

Trade With Africa: Skander Negasi

Skander Negasi, CEO of Trade and Fairs GmbH, introduces us to the developing fashion and textile hub in East Africa. With manufacturing costs increasing in Europe and Asia, buyers are looking for new destinations. Following the successful launch of the Origin Africa trade show in 2012 in Ethiopia alongside US Aid, since then many international trade fairs, events & conferences within different industries, including textile, apparel and fashion have been organised. He is responsible for the biggest exhibition of this nature in Africa, the Africa Sourcing and Fashion Week (ASFW) in Addis Ababa. The ASFW hosts over 4000 exhibitors and 6000 trade buyers. This includes H&M, Hugo Boss, Mango, Zara and more; and of course smaller local boutique designers and craftsmen are included, as well as huge industrial factory equipment. The main trends Skander highlights are the digitalisation of goods, sustainable production of fabric, and the practice of African Continental Free Trade (Africans doing business with Africans). For many African designers keen to expand their retail horizons, we encourage listening to Skander’s global insights from a business and trade perspective, “Without investment you don’t get anything…this is the homework for African designers… to promote their brand and work with shops… if they always depend on supporters, then it’s going to be very very tough.” Support the show [https://www.patreon.com/FANpodcast]

The Power Of Technology And Its Digital Spaces: Seju Alero Mike

For our 19th Episode, we met with Seju Alero Mike, creative entrepreneur from Nigeria. She’s a hybrid of emerging talent of combined passion for the creative space and methodological expertise. In Seju’s case, it is rooted in finance. Seju is the founder and lead curator of OSENGWA; an online platform featuring contemporary African art, fashion and music conceived by artists at the forefront of today’s Neo-African movement. In 2016 OSENGWA & The Monroe Trust presented the Afro Frontal exhibition in celebration of the Grand Opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. More recently in 2020 Seju launched iRAAMi, an app which helps Africans in the diaspora find resources and experiences that connect them with the continent and one another. “We are always buying things from the West… I think it’s important that we also export. Not just physical goods but creative capital and intellectual capital”. Despite the turbulence of 2020, particularly for Black lives globally with the eruption of BLM and EndSars, but also the restrictions that came with the pandemic, Seju used the opportunity as a catalyst and leverage to establish and grow her entrepreneurial plans by moving back to Lagos, Nigeria from the US. Her eCommerce acumen contributes to the expansion of digitalisation on the continent. Support the show [https://www.patreon.com/FANpodcast]

Young, Black And Reflecting Experiences: Soji Solarin

Soji Solarin is a Nigerian born contemporary fashion designer whose experience and perception on racism in Germany and world view offer a unique perspective on ‘Blackness’. Moving to America from Nigeria at the age of 13, he’s drawn inspiration from hidden figures such as the Black cowboys in America, which we later see reflected in Soji’s first collection “Negro Cowboys“. From Nigeria to Maryland, Los Angeles, lang haul to Berlin, where he’s now based, to Moscow where he debuted his Spring 2020 collection at MBFW - Soji has been able to identify and distinguish the disparities in how he’s been received as a Nigerian-born, but also more encompassing, as a Black person. “It’s very easy for white people to just like find their place and their identity… and Black people just have to search around.” The different nuances and racial climates has propelled his approach when designing his collections, to reflect the global malleability and pride of Blackness. “I would love to be part of why people see Black people in a better light.. and contribute something fruitful to the world”. Support the show [https://www.patreon.com/FANpodcast]