Ankara Kampala: Property Rights as Revamps for the Adire Indigenous Knowledge

Abstract

Adire the textile art tradition of the Yoruba is a product of indigenous knowledge which has become a ubiquitous part of the socio- cultural landscape of Southwestern Nigeria. Though its origin is hazy, the cloth is dynamic, ever evolving, and as an art tradition it has evoked many scholastic discourse. It is a source of economic and artistic heritage. This dynamism, based on evolving techniques and technology, has resulted in many variations of which Ankara Kampala is one. The coinage Ankara Kampala is a marriage of the word Kampala, a name by which Adire, the patterned dyed cloth of the Yoruba was dubbed at a time in history, and Ankara, the name by which the factory printed fabric or African prints are known. The paper, based on field research, shows that Ankara Kampala is by no means novel, but rather a transcription of the motifs of the indigenous Adire by textile multinationals within and outside the indigenous enclave of this textile. It explains how lack of appropriate property rights has impacted negatively on this indigenous textile art, the economy and the artists.

Keywords: Ankara-Kampala, Property Rights, Revamp, Adire, Motifs