About Us

Crafts of Africa - Kenya is a grass-roots oriented marketing organization. Our major focus is to promote the social; economic and cultural heritage of our people such as the squatter dwellers/urban poor, small farmers, pastoralist and the handicapped etc who are striving to be self-reliant despite the harsh reality in their daily lives. At www.craftofafrica.org  we regard a well organized and managed handicraft industry as a meaningful economic activity through which nation’s deepest heritage and traditions, cultural roots, customs of folk and Art, can be passed on from one generation to next. With this in mind, handicrafts making needs to be treated as an important home based ( Jua – Kali ) informal sector that has the  potential for employment creation opportunities, in addition to curbing rural – urban migration as well as  earning the country the much needed foreign exchange/hard currency  through crafts export.

Beneficiaries   
Although aid to Africa and the developing world in general will always retain a precious niche; what Africa needs is trade and investment. “Not Aid handouts”   Meaningful development to any country is never brought about by Aid ….!!!. Nor has aid killed poverty in our beloved continent.  To achieve our goal and objectives, Crafts of Africa – Kenya is actively involved in nurturing talents for participatory development through mobilizing and encouraging the marginalized or the less fortunate persons tap their ingenuity, talents and creativity by making unique, high quality artifacts, utilitarian and decorative handicrafts that command ready sale locally and internationally. Over the years, we have been able to establish an enhanced business links with over 100 skilled self-help crafts producer groups and individual artisans in rural villages, urban and  peri – urban slums areas. Most of these group’s average membership range between 15 – 50 people, with the 70% of the members being women. On average, each group member or household has about six dependants. In short, we have over the years been able to contribute to the country’s national economic growth in terms of uplifting the social-economic status of the impoverished grass-roots communities.

In line with Crafts of Africa – Kenya concept of motivating the social-economically disadvantaged Self –Help craft producer groups, Crafts of Africa – Kenya pays “good prices” for “good products”. This enables the producers and their families to earn returns that adequately meet their social – economic needs. To guarantee prompt delivery time of the importers’ orders, Crafts of Africa – Kenya finds it necessary to financially support the producer groups by paying cash up front at the time of placing an order. Further payment arrangements are made as production progresses. This is done with the objective of facilitating the respective producer groups/artisan  embark and continue working in an efficient way.

For the purpose of keeping a prudent track of the producer groups progress on each order placed, Crafts of Africa – Kenya export quality control team does closely monitor the production process with the sole purpose of making sure that each producer group is not only meeting the order delivery time schedule, but also offering high export quality merchandise that command ready sale.