SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
All this week, we've been traveling through the sprawling metropolises of West Africa. And today, we're in Togo, a narrow sliver of a country squeezed between Benin and Ghana. Here, a group of iconic businesswomen known as the Nana Benz are celebrated as national treasures. Their legacy still inspires others today. They built huge fortunes in the fabric trade, and that name came from the Mercedes-Benzes they drove. But while textiles remain a major industry, that kind of success now feels out of reach. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu has the story.
(CROSSTALK)
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: Bundles of colorful fabrics fill dozens of boutiques at the sprawling Grand Marche, the largest market in Togo's capital, Lome. Dyed indigo prints from Nigeria and glossy fabrics from Mali and Senegal line the walls. But it's the Dutch wax fabrics, dense with swirling floral designs, that are at the heart of the fairy tale rise of the Nana Benz.
(SOUNDBITE OF KING MENSAH SONG, "NANA BENZ")
AKINWOTU: Songs like this one, by Togolese singer King Mensah, have immortalized the Nana Benz, glamorous women dressed in immaculate fabrics who would ride their luxury cars down the palm-lined streets of Lome.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NANA BENZ")
KING MENSAH: (Singing in non-English language).
AKINWOTU: The Nana Benz were working-class fabric traders who shot to fame in the 1950s by importing wax fabrics, which exploded in popularity, widely produced by Dutch company Vlisco. It propelled the women who dominated the market into new wealth and turned them into symbols of the region's commercial potential. Dozens of Vlisco boutiques still populate the Grand Marche, selling textiles and memorializing the traders who founded them.
So we've just arrived at a pretty spell-binding Vlisco store at the Grand Marche in Lome. Downstairs, it's like any of the others, full of beautiful fabrics lining the walls and on shelves across the store. But then you climb upstairs and it's an incredible exhibition. The walls are covered in archival pictures, framed pictures of four generations of women who belong to the Nana Benz, posing in front of Mercedes-Benz and other cars.
(CROSSTALK)
AKINWOTU: One of the boutiques is run by 62-year-old Francesca Ayayi (ph), who now runs it with her daughter. Ayayi inherited the business from her 92-year-old mother, among a few of the original group of Nana Benz who are still alive today.
FRANCESCA AYAYI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: Speaking in a blend of the local language, Ewe, and French, she says her mother made so much money, she had a fleet of luxury cars. She also bought land, properties for her and her 10 children and gold.
AYAYI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: "She lived like a queen," she says. But the memories are tinged with bitterness. While thousands of women still work in the fabric trade, they earn a fraction of what they used to because of the economic shifts and struggles in Togo and the region.
AYAYI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: "How can you buy clothes if you don't have food," she says. Then, she says, the market became saturated, driven by the success of the Nana Benz. Worse still, cheap Chinese imports have flooded the market, undercutting local traders.
AYAYI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: "Most look like the Dutch wax fabrics," she says, "and most customers can't tell the difference."
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE HONKING)
AKINWOTU: Lome is just one city along a rapidly growing 600-mile urban corridor between Nigeria and Ivory Coast. It will soon be home to more than 50 million people, but jobs and opportunities remain scarce.
MARIUS KOTHOR: A lot of these women learn how to trade from their mothers and the experiences of their mothers.
AKINWOTU: Dr. Marius Kothor is an academic at Harvard University who was raised in Togo and has researched the history of the Nana Benz.
KOTHOR: A lot of the women that I talked to, you know, they were just kind of very sad about the fact that they're not trading in the volumes that they're used to trading.
AKINWOTU: She's interviewed generations of women traders across Togo and West Africa, where repeated economic shocks have made life much harder for small businesses. And as she says, it shows...
KOTHOR: Just how dramatically people's fortunes can change because of the fact that these economies can be, in a lot of ways, very unstable.
AKINWOTU: She said, for a time in Togo, the fabric trade was a rare chance at prosperity. But today the market is volatile and unrewarding.
AYAYI: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: Francesca Ayayi grew up in awe of the success her mother achieved in the 1970s and '80s. And she joined the business assuming she would carry it on. But now it's faltering.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NANA BENZ")
KING MENSAH: (Singing in non-English language).
AKINWOTU: The prospect of achieving even a fraction of what her mother and the other Nana Benz did now feels out of reach.
Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Lome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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