At the Co-op, we’re proud to stand with Black entrepreneurs, creators, and visionaries, highlighting their incredible work. This month, we encourage everyone to support Black-owned businesses, learn more about Black history, and uplift voices that continue to inspire and lead change. ❤
Olowo-n’djo Tchala and Alaffia
One of the smallest countries in Africa is the Togolese Republic, or Togo, a tropical nation of bustling villages and gradually rolling grasslands that’s home to more than 7.5 million people. Togo is bordered on the west by Ghana and on the south by the Gulf of Guinea, making it a hub of West African culture, industry, and art.
Many Togolese are poor, surviving on subsistence agriculture, and the lack of opportunity provides fertile ground for exploitation, particularly in the sex trade. But in the city of Sokodé, a lush, vibrant commercial and agricultural region in central Togo, there is reason for hope.
Entrepreneur, CEO, and activist Olowo-n’djo Tchala was a child in Togo when he watched his mother earn pennies collecting nuts from shea trees to sell to wealthy shea nut buyers for expensive skin-care products coveted by consumers in the West. Tchala had to drop out of school in 6th grade because his mother no longer could afford to send him.
Decades later, Tchala met a young Peace Corps volunteer from Washington state named Prairie Rose Hyde. The two would later marry and risk everything they had to form the Alaffia cooperative. Their idea was to use the resources West African women already had—the skills, knowledge and traditions of African craft work and natural shea butter production—to empower women, preserve indigenous culture, and produce a high-quality product.
In 2014, Tchala and Rose converted an outgrown shea butter processing center into the Alaffia Artisan Center. Rose was a skilled seamstress and pattern designer, and the couple saw another opportunity to empower a disadvantaged group in the community. The Queen Alaffia line of products was born.
The Alaffia Artisan Center in Sokodé is a cooperative, fair-trade textile center offering work and rehabilitation for Togolese women determined to escape prostitution. The Center’s seamstresses make beautiful, one-of-a-kind bags, scarves, purses, and more from colorful, hand-printed African fabrics. Through the cooperative model, the items are then shipped to select markets in the West, including the Co-op.
On a Fair Trade model, Alaffia artisans and producers also handcraft clean, green skin and hair care products using fair trade ingredients. Alaffia partners with The Global Alliance for Community Empowerment to empower women and their communities in West Africa by investing in fair trade, maternal care, child education, and addressing climate change.
Find an assortment of wonderful skin & hair care products from Alaffia at both our Lebanon and White River stores today!
Mike Eigenbrode is the Co-op’s Relationship & Experience Program Specialist. Senior copywriter Ken Davis contributed to this post.
