Tourism and fashion are more interconnected than many realise.
For a country like Nigeria, with its rich history of textiles, fashion, and culture, tourism presents an enormous opportunity to showcase and promote local arts while stimulating economic growth.
Nigeria, a treasure trove of local textiles and traditional apparel, could leverage its relatively untapped tourism industry to market local destinations, attract tourists, and create a thriving ecosystem for fashion and textile exports.
Tourism, at its core, is about experiencing the culture of a place. And what better way to express culture than through the local fashion?
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Nigeria’s fashion industry, with its globally recognised textiles such as Aso Oke, Adire, and Ankara, has already started gaining international recognition.
However, its tourism industry has not fully harnessed the potential to merge these elements in a way that boosts both sectors.
A symbiotic relationship
Fashion is often one of the most immediate ways for tourists to engage with the culture of the countries they visit.
For example, in countries like Morocco and India, tourism and fashion are intertwined. Morocco’s bustling souks are filled with traditional rugs, kaftans, and jewellery, attracting millions of tourists who want to take a piece of the culture home.
In 2019 alone, Morocco hosted over 12.93 million tourists, with a significant portion contributing to the fashion and craft sectors. Similarly, India’s rich textile industry is a significant draw for tourists, where silk saris and handcrafted block-printed fabrics are sold globally.
Nigeria’s fashion scene, with designers such as Deola Sagoe and Lisa Folawiyo making waves internationally, presents an untapped reservoir of potential.
Lagos Fashion Week, for example, attracts international buyers and fashion enthusiasts, showing that the local fashion industry already has global appeal. Nigeria can do more to blend this momentum with its tourism sector to promote local destinations as fashion hubs.
The untapped potential of Nigeria’s fashion tourism
Nigeria, with its vibrant cultural heritage, is in a unique position to follow in the footsteps of other nations that have successfully integrated fashion into their tourism strategies.
The global success stories of Rwanda, Ghana, and Kenya illustrate how cultural fashion tourism can drive not just international attention but also local economic empowerment.
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Cultural Festivals as Fashion Showcases: Nigeria already has cultural festivals like the Durbar that attract local and international visitors. By integrating fashion showcases into these events, Nigeria can highlight the beauty of traditional garments like Aso Oke and Adire, while offering tourists a firsthand experience of how these fabrics are woven and dyed. This could be similar to Ghana’s Chale Wote Festival, which blends street art, music, and fashion to engage thousands of tourists and drive local sales of crafts and garments.
Fashion Tourism Experiences: Nigeria could introduce fashion tourism tours, offering visitors curated experiences where they can visit textile markets, witness the craftsmanship of traditional weavers, and purchase unique, handmade fashion items. A model for this can be found in Rwanda, where tourists are guided through cooperatives producing Umusambi silk, adding value to their travel experience while promoting local business.
Destination Marketing: African countries like South Africa have successfully used destination marketing to promote their cultural sectors, including fashion. Nigeria could market cities like Lagos, Abeokuta, and Kano as fashion capitals in their own right, celebrating local crafts and textiles through dedicated campaigns aimed at international visitors.
Jobs, growth, and exports
Tourism’s potential to boost Nigeria’s fashion industry goes beyond cultural appreciation—it could create jobs and drive export growth.
The Nigerian fashion industry, currently worth an estimated $4.7 billion, still has untapped supply chain opportunities that can benefit from the integration of tourism.
If Nigeria were to promote local textiles and fashion through tourism, it would create jobs in sectors such as textile production, garment design, and retail, helping to reduce unemployment and strengthen local economies.
Countries like Ethiopia have shown that textile production can be both a job creator and an export booster. The Ethio-TeX initiative, which promotes sustainable, eco-friendly fashion, has led to increased global demand for Ethiopian garments. Nigeria could emulate this model by highlighting its own sustainable practices, such as the eco-conscious dyeing processes used in Adire textile production, and marketing them to an international audience.
Case studies from around the world
Countries that have successfully integrated tourism with fashion provide a clear blueprint for Nigeria:
Kenya has transformed its Maasai Shuka cloth into an internationally recognised symbol of Kenyan culture, drawing tourists who purchase Maasai-inspired fashion items that contribute directly to local economies.
Peru has a thriving tourism industry around its traditional Andean textiles, with tourists visiting local villages to see firsthand how alpaca wool is woven into intricate patterns, creating jobs for thousands of women.
These success stories show that fashion and tourism can co-exist and flourish, creating cultural appreciation and economic growth.
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The way forward
Nigeria’s path to leveraging tourism for its fashion industry is clear. By integrating fashion into its tourism strategy, Nigeria can:
Attract international tourists through cultural festivals, fashion weeks, and market tours.
Create thousands of jobs in textiles, fashion design, and retail.
Boost exports of locally made garments, attracting the growing global market for authentic, handmade fashion.
Drive foreign exchange and strengthen local economies.
Tourism can be a gateway to unlocking the potential of Nigeria’s fashion industry, and in doing so, showcase the vibrant culture and creativity that defines the nation. With the right policies, Nigeria can transform its textiles, fashion, and apparel industries into globally recognized symbols of African innovation, while creating a sustainable future for its people.
