Lagos Fashion Week, the 2025 Earthshot Prize winner, has launched The Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future, the African Fashion Coalition’s manifesto (referred to as “The Manifesto”), through an African Fashion Compact II partnership with The Earthshot Prize, held in London during London Climate Action Week. The document stakes out Africa’s place as a leader in shaping a regenerative, inclusive, and climate-responsive fashion industry.
As the global fashion industry contends with mounting pressure around climate impact, waste, inequality, and unsustainable production practices, the Manifesto brings a distinctly African lens, drawing on generations of craftsmanship, circular practice, and community-driven innovation to chart a more resilient path forward.
At the heart of the Manifesto is a call for ownership and value. Africa has long supplied the raw materials, skill, and creative vision behind global fashion, yet captures only a fraction of the value it generates. The continent exports roughly $15 billion in raw textiles annually while importing over $23 billion in finished clothing and footwear. The Manifesto frames this imbalance not as a talent gap, but as a gap in ownership which needs to be filled.
The Manifesto has been developed following a series of convenings, workshops, consultations, and stakeholder engagements led by Lagos Fashion Week and The Earthshot Prize. It reflects the collective thinking of the African Fashion Coalition, a community of African fashion leaders, sustainability advocates, researchers, educators, artisans, and entrepreneurs. Building on the Manifesto Lab convened in April 2026, it was further refined through ongoing consultation and collaboration across the ecosystem, resulting in a shared framework for a sustainable fashion future.
Contributors to the Manifesto Lab included Omoyemi Akerele (Founder and Executive Director of Lagos Fashion Week); Simone Smit (Director of Africa at The Earthshot Prize); Jackie May (Founder of Twyg), Adama Paris (Founder of Dakar Fashion Week); Mahlet Teklemariam (Founder of Hub of Africa Fashion Week); Liz Ricketts (Founder of The OR Foundation); Renee Neblett (Founder of Kokrobitey Institute); and Sunny Dolat (Researcher and Sustainable Curator at The Nest Collective).
The Manifesto recognises that many of the principles now being championed as solutions for a regenerative fashion future, including repair, reuse, stewardship, local production, resource efficiency, and intergenerational knowledge transfer, have long existed across African fashion systems and cultural practices. It is structured around ten interconnected pillars spanning cultural heritage, circularity, inclusive prosperity, intellectual property protection, waste justice, local manufacturing, regenerative innovation, market access, infrastructure development and conscious consumption. These pillars provide a framework for strengthening the systems, partnerships, and investments needed to support a more regenerative, inclusive, and resilient fashion future across the continent.
Omoyemi Akerele, Founder and Executive Director of Lagos Fashion Week (2025 Earthshot Prize winner, Build a Waste-Free World category), on the launch:
“The Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future reflects a shared vision embedded in African realities. For generations, Africa has supplied the materials, craftsmanship, and creativity that shape global fashion while capturing little of the value it helps create. The resources are ours. The value is theirs. We are celebrated as a source of inspiration and shut out of the industry we inspire. The Manifesto frames this not as a gap in talent but as a gap in ownership, and calls for the investment, infrastructure, and equitable share of value needed to keep the worth of African ideas, materials, labour, and culture on the continent. Most importantly, it is a commitment to collective action and to shaping what comes next.”
Simone Smit, Director of Africa, The Earthshot Prize:
“Africa is not just participating in the global environmental movement, it’s leading it. And Earthshot solutions are right at the heart of it. The role played by Lagos Fashion Week in shaping the Manifesto, in collaboration with other leaders, has demonstrated that the most impactful solutions are those that combine innovation with local knowledge and the people closest to the challenge.”
The Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future is open for endorsement. Individuals and organisations across the fashion ecosystem can read and sign at www.lagosfashionweek.com, joining the coalition in moving it from intention to adoption.
