Chi Atanga wants to create jobs in Africa, build a line of ethical luxury fashion and, while he's at it, make a decent amount of money for himself.
To that end, in 2015 he founded the Walls of Benin to produce a line of high-end loungewear based on African-inspired designs. While he started manufacturing in Portugal, the goal is to add production in Kenya and Mozambique as soon as he has enough resources to do so. The company also uses sustainable fabrics, like Tencel, a silk-like material made from eucalyptus pulp that also doesn’t require as much water as cotton.
(The Walls of Benin, according to Wikipedia, were “a combination of ramparts and moats, called Iya in the local language, used as a defense of the ancient Kingdom of Benin, which is present-day Benin City, the capital of present-day Edo, Nigeria.”)
Born in Manchester, England, the son of Cameroonian parents, Atanga says he always wanted to make a lot of money, but to have a positive impact on the world, too. Growing up in what he calls “the era of the Body Shop,” he also was inspired by Innocent, a company making fruit juices from natural ingredients that gives 10% of profits to community-based charities.
After graduating from university, he spent two years working for TeachFirst, a UK-based Teach for America-style program. In 2013, when he started looking around for what to do next, he says, “I started noticing an explosion of interest in ethical fashion”. At the same time, he saw a growing demand for African design.
Then it hit him: Create an eco-friendly fashion company, with production in Africa, the better to create jobs there. He decided beachwear was out, since other companies were already doing that. Then he landed on another category, loungewear, an apparel sector he later learned is growing in popularity as everyday garb.
A two-year period of intense research followed. Also, “I made a lot of mistakes during that time,” Atanga says. For example, with no previous experience in apparel manufacturing, he didn’t have a clue about how many moving parts there are in the supply chain, from materials to manufacturing. Another one: He assumed he’d start production in Africa immediately. But he initially focused on West Africa, where his parents came from, only to learn that East Africa was the better bet. Plus he realized the smarter strategy, he says, “was to create an infrastructure by first building a stronghold in Europe.”
With that in mind, he moved to Portugal, where he received a six-figure grant from the Portuguese government, and started production in 2015. For now, he’s using a contract facility, where, according to Atanga, he keeps a close watch on labor conditions. His plan is to hire a manager to oversee compliance with the UN Global Compact standards, a framework closely aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He also now is in UPTEC, an incubator located at the University of Porto.
As for moving production to Kenya and Mozambique, Atanga recently ran a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the effort. The goal was to raise £20,000. But the campaign only attracted £2,549 and, in fact, Atanga shut it down shortly before it was about to close. He’s regrouping and planning to launch a new campaign in a few weeks.
