What is Kente?

Kente is a prominent Ghana fabric commonly known as nwentom in Akan, the silk and cotton fabrics are made of interwoven cloth strips and are common to the Akan ethnic group of Ghana. It is a cloth traditionally worn only by the royals and the elite during important events. Bonwire is the town situated in the Ashanti region of Ghana where Kente fabric originated.

A unique feature of the Kente cloth is that each pattern design has a name and a special meaning, and each of the colours used (which ranges from black to yellow to a total number of 12 colours) represent a significant meaning of royalty, purification, fertility, maturity, harmony, polities, sacrifice and death.

Tales have it that Kente was first made by two Akan friends who went hunting in Asanteman forest and found a spider making its web. The friends watched and studied the spider for days and then implemented what they had seen.