The African Development Bank has launched an initiative to assist fashion entrepreneurs in South Africa and Nigeria and Kenya. It is targeting to improve skills, financing, the supply chain, access to markets and handle many other challenges. The bank’s ‘Jobs for Youth in Africa’ strategy aims at creating 25 million jobs for youth on the continent as well as equipping an additional 50 million in the next decade.

African entrepreneurs have to import most of their materials, seek markets and build their own capacity by investing on their own. There has been a rapid growth in fashion designers across the country but without supporting infrastructure such as manufacturing, cotton production and marketing. Other challenges are problems with skills, especially marketing skills, financing that is difficult to obtain, expensive real estate, online payment issues in a region where banks are scarce, insufficient production capacity and so on.

The ADB aims at addressing these issues and empowering and funding the industry to produce local fabric and cut down fabric imports. Production of fabrics will also help designers from Africa get the fabric of their choice. African Development Bank commands huge funds and is known for its multi-billion infrastructure projects such as roads.