Basket Weaving is a traditional craft of the Fra-Fra women of northern Ghana. Ojoba Collective directly works with 400 women to make our beautiful, high quality baskets. The women are all part of the Ojoba Widows Weaving Cooperative, and we are very proud to work with them!

All the baskets come in one large size and come in a wide assortment of colors and designs. Each basket is hand woven from elephant grass, a local grass native to West Africa, and has a leather wrapped handle made from cruelty-free leather.

These baskets are very strong and durable! Use them as a beautiful home décor accent, take to the market, or to carry your belongings around town! Each basket is hand-made, and a beautiful and unique expression of the women who weave them.

OJOBA WIDOWS WEAVING COOPERATIVE

Ojoba Collective helped start a widows weaving cooperative in northern Ghana in 2005 as a way of assisting the most vulnerable segment of society; rural widow women and their children. In the beginning we started with 75 weavers, and today we work with 400!

All of the women we work with are Fra-Fra people, a local ethnic group which is still very traditional and practices polygamy. It is seen as a sign of wealth in the community to have many wives and children. The husbands must pay a dowry, and often only older men can afford many wives. Therefore when an older man dies, he might leave behind up to five young women with very young children to take care of. There is no government help for these women, and local inheritance practices leave them with nothing after their husband's death. Most of the women are illiterate and lack basic education; therefore there are few opportunities for them to improve their lives.

Women have been weaving baskets in this region since time immemorial, and selling them on the local market as a way to supplement their subsistence lifestyle. Unfortunately, since this is a very impoverished section of the world, those who buy on the local market are also quite poor, and can not afford to pay a fair price for the amount of time and materials that goes into these beautiful baskets. Recently, these baskets have become very sought-after worldwide, creating an international market.

Unfortunately, rather than aiding and empowering the village women who weave these baskets, this has created an opportunity for educated middlemen from the cities to arrive on the scene and, in a haste to make profits, force the women to sell their baskets at an even lower price than the regular market price. This creates a poverty trap where the women work even harder and earn less money, often unable to properly feed, clothe, and educate their children. That is why it is so important to buy a fair trade basket. This is the only way to ensure that the local women are paid a fair price for their skill and hard work.

MEET A MEMBER OF THE OJOBA WIDOWS WEAVING COOPERATIVE

Ayimbono is one of the original 75 members of the cooperative. When we began working with her in 2005, we interviewed her, and learned how difficult life could be as a young widow with five children in the poverty-stricken north of Ghana. Her main source of income since her husband died in 1998 has been basket weaving, but the low local prices available in the market place made it impossible to adequately provide for her family with her skill and hard work. They often went hungry.

But things have been improving since we formed the weaving cooperative. We met with her again on our last trip, and she reports that having the steady work, long-term business partnership, and good prices for her baskets have made a huge impact on her life. As she says “now I realize that I can stand on my own two feet. Even without a husband I can earn enough money for food and school fees. We don’t have to struggle as much now.”