Oliberté and Baobab Batik, partners in empowering working women in Africa.

The inspiring team behind Baobab Batik, Oliberté’s latest partner in promoting fair trade goods created in Africa.

We’ve teamed up with Baobab Batik, a brilliant company out of Swaziland that focuses on empowering the local women it works with each day. Their 30+ team has over 20 years of experience in handcrafting beautiful uniquely dyed fabrics and we saw their work as an opportunity to bring a new world of colours and materials to our collection. Baobab Batik’s vision is to be a leading example of social enterprise through the pursuit of innovation and thought leadership in developing their art-form, which is exactly what inspired us to proudly bring their craft to you.

Founded by Els Hooft in 1991, Baobab Batik was created to make beautiful Batiks, dyed cloth using wax to create intricate designs, and provide a safe, sustainable platform to offer work opportunities for women in Swaziland. Since its inception over 20 years ago, it has grown to a thriving enterprise employing 35 artisans full time. As a social enterprise, it reinvests 50% of all profits back into the company and its employees and operates according to the nine fair trade principles. The enterprise also operates on the principles of transparency, accountability and TEAM (Together Everyone Achieves More), which are some of the many reasons that Oliberté is proud to partner with them and share their achievements.

The promotion of working women initiatives is one of the most effective ways at combating the issues of underdevelopment, gender inequality and poverty in many nations around the world. As half the world’s work force, countries with the fastest growth of women’s participation in the labour force, also experienced the largest reduction in poverty rates. The best solution to tackling gender inequality in these areas is to offer opportunities such as Baobab Batik, and let the results speak for themselves. We hope that as the positive trends become evident, it will create a domino effect to surrounding areas and usher in a more equal, prosperous future.

One of Oliberté’s core operating principles is the promotion of workers’ rights for ALL, so working with an organization such as Baobab Batik to support this aim AND create a Spring/Summer line featuring their beautiful artisanal designs is a huge win on many levels. We are proud to offer their new designs on many of our models, and we look forward to influencing positive change together for years to come.