East of Africa Marketplace

Designers. Makers. Ethical Merchant Traders.

Partnerning with East African artisans. African textile traders. Design Studio. Slow Fashion.

Made by hand and heart.

Marketplace

East of Africa Fabric Store

Uhuru Street, Buguruni. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 

All our Kanga, Kitenge, Kikoy, Batiki and African wax print fabrics are directly traded & ethically sourced from our sister store.

The partnership of our marketplace to our Tanzanian fabric store enables us to employ a team of two local staff. Our team is training in our own sewing studio to produce locally made handicrafts.

East of Africa Marketplace & Studio

330 Melbourne Road, Newport. Melbourne, Australia.

We are specialist African textile traders, importing hand crafted Tanzanian batiki, kikoy, kitenge, khanga, Ankara and African Wax Print. We also carry a large collection of Authentic Vlisco wax prints.

Our Melbourne studio produces our slow fashion, our custom furniture collection, our handcrafts from our directly traded fabrics and batiks including our bags, blankets and homewares.

International Sales via Etsy

Makers & Traders in Partnership

Our Marketplace shopfront trades together with our sewing studio. We have a stunning collection of beautifully made handcrafts directly traded and ethically sourced from Eastern & Southern Africa. We trade directly with our artisans to ensure the income is paid directly to them from the global Marketplace.

Our purpose is to connect you with talented artisans and small businesses. We believe that regular, consistent trade and partnership can be effective, empowering, and can support micro business and artisans to have sustainable, secure and valuable employment.

Visit our Marketplace & Studio

330 Melbourne Road Newport, Melbourne Australia

Opening hours:

Tuesday - Friday 10 - 5

Saturday - 10 - 4

Closed Sunday & Monday

For assistance & enquiries, please contact Erica 0410 622 699 or via erica@eastofafrica.com.au

kikoy

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AFRICA MAP beaded bag MAJI :: WATER
AFRICA MAP beaded bag MAJI :: WATER
  • Load image into Gallery viewer, AFRICA MAP beaded bag MAJI :: WATER
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AFRICA MAP beaded bag MAJI :: WATER

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Maji ni uhai :: Water is life
Think for a moment how easy you have access to water.
Maybe you don’t need to carry, store it, or go without when it’s not available.
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Safe access to water is a luxury. It’s not the global standard. And there are enormous challenges and risks involved in fetching water and having access to water.
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We want to invest in water infrastructure. To improve connections. Little by little. Our beaded AFRIKA features water bubbles. Purchase this handcrafted ZiPPY Bag and invest in safe water infrastructure in Tanzania
A thousand small choices add up. Little by little our trade becomes transformative. Our investment in products engages passion and innovation, and creates new projects. Employment becomes sustainable, safe, empowering, unique and meaningful. Choose to be a change maker, choose to support makers and creators. 

Invest in beautiful products and hardworking communities. 

Our Beaded Batiki Africa Pouch features custom hand crafted tie dye made for us in Iringa, Tanzania.  The heart of our work is to connect you to talented East African artisans, for the investment in creating creative employment that is sustainable and empowering.

Our AFRICA bags are premium and created to be treasured forever.

Each bag is created by hand from premium glass Japanese Miyuki beads, stitched onto a lush heavyweight German linen. This is paired with our direct trade custom tie dye made on Tanzanian cotton fabric and paired our deluxe designer denim. The bag features a YKK metal zipper, a tiny Africa Map charm and is lined in a premium linen/cotton fabric. 

The bag measurements are:

22cm wide and 27cm high

Care: We recommend taking it everywhere on adventure with you, and to avoid washing. 

'A hasty person misses the sweet things'. Mwenye pupa hadiriki kula tamu.

Handwoven Baskets

Woollen jumpers transported to East Africa from charity shops across the world are unravelled and reworked into big, beautiful storage baskets. And now our own pre-loved, discarded clothing has travelled the globe and returned to us in a functional and creative new format. 

Choose your Favourite

Kenyan Tusker Candles

We love global stories, which is why we create handmade products filled with them. Every aspect of our hand made and hand poured candles carry meaning and tales, all the way from East Africa.

Buy Now

Direct Trade Maasai Earrings

Your purchase of this product directly supports fair trade with Tanzanian Maasai Mama's. This trade contributes to their micro-businesses, invests in supporting traditional techniques and provides regular income for them and their children, and each pair is custom made.

Shop the Collection

Tanzanian Batiki

Handcrafted in Tanga, Tanzania.

Our stunning hand dyed and hand printed collection of batiki is custom made for us in collaboration with the talented Ester and her team.

Each piece of batiki is uniquely beautiful, truly a piece of fabric art. As it is always hand crafted, our batiki is carefully colour mixed, hand stamped and overdyed in a such a way that it can never be reproduced exactly the same.

The fabric is 100% cotton and already softened for wear with the hand dying and washing. The perfect weighted cotton for clothing or homewares.

As our collection is always produced in small batches, our fabric pieces are precious and very limited. Our batiki features in our store in cushion covers, bags, blankets and handcrafted clothing in our slow fashion collection.

Shop our Batiki Collection

Handcrafted in Tanzania

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