• “Facilitating Social and Economic growth of the grass-roots Handicraft producers in Rural Villages, Urban and Peri-urban slums to attain self-reliance through sales outlets locally and overseas”

  • “Facilitating Social and Economic growth of the grass-roots Handicraft producers in Rural Villages, Urban and Peri-urban slums to attain self-reliance through sales outlets locally and overseas”

  • “Facilitating Social and Economic growth of the grass-roots Handicraft producers in Rural Villages, Urban and Peri-urban slums to attain self-reliance through sales outlets locally and overseas”

  • “Facilitating Social and Economic growth of the grass-roots Handicraft producers in Rural Villages, Urban and Peri-urban slums to attain self-reliance through sales outlets locally and overseas”

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.


 

“Empathy and self- reliance” 

In the spirit of mutual understanding and in the interest of promoting the ideals and the philosophy of  “empathy and self- reliance”  It has always been founded necessary to ask crafts importers for a 70% advance payment against the proforma invoice prior to the goods shipment or air freighting. This is done for the purpose of enabling Crafts of Africa – Kenya to practically implement a people centered motivational approach that enables it to have a sound working capital, thus guaranteeing a conducive process for sustainable development.

 

However, in the event of low business turnover, both the Craft producer groups and our team/staff do inevitably experience temporary financial setbacks that hamper the organization’s efforts towards reducing poverty and unemployment. Hence the need for us to explore and map out new marketing strategies and approaches that enhance handicrafts export abroad. This is critical because some of the many problems facing majority of Kenya’s population of 40 million people is widespread poverty, high unemployment and underemployment levels among other social economic problems/vices. However, in as much as the Government would like to address itself to the numerous problems facing the low income groups, it cannot achieve much without the support of each and every development conscious person, church or non-governmental organizations including the private sectors and the international community. It was out of this concern that www.craftofafrica.org  was formed. In as much as we would like to realize our vision/mission, much more support in terms of “Trade and good will” from the potential crafts importers/buyers and trading partners is required

 Our vision and mission is guided by the ideals of self - reliance and nurturing of participatory development process /approach. Our long term objective is to build up low income artisans so that they can build up a future for themselves by generating income through Handicrafts making. This entails:

  • Enabling artisans to utilize their God given talents and creativity in:
  • Reducing unemployment through job creation and poverty alleviation
  • Personal motivation and dedication to indigenous crafts production
  • Enhancing crafts marketing networks

·         Fostering Eco-tourism promotion. This is being realized through by  taping into the synergy of our sister organization www.peopletopeopletourism.com 

 

In order to  enable our organization to continue playing a more significant role now  and for  many more years to come in enabling the crafts producer groups that we work with generate income through handicrafts making and in the process uplift their social economic income to meet their basic needs like food, clothing, shelter, education, health services etc.. and in the process fight poverty, much more support is needed.

Local and Foreign Net-working

Handicrafts marketing be it at the local or international level is a dynamic process that requires constant   up-dates and information on any new development activities in the crafts world. It is an awareness that has made Crafts of Africa – Kenya to establish links with both the government and the private organizations. Some of these are; The Export Promotion Council (EPC) The Kenya External Trade Authority (KETA) of the Ministry of Trade; and the Kenya National Chambers of Commerce and Industry. www.craftofafrica.org does also have links with foreign based organization involved in the promotion and marketing of Handicrafts from the less developed countries.

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