Fish leather and plant fibres drive Africa’s new materials market

 

Off the coast of Zanzibar, rows of cultivated seaweed sit tethered to wooden stakes in the shallows, farmed in neat lines by local growers who check on them each morning.

In six weeks, the crop will be harvested and carried inland to KelTex, a fast growing biomaterials enterprise in Tanzania, where trained hands will begin to transform the marine biomass into high grade bioleather.

KelTex is among a growing cadre of producers moving past the early trials that defined the industry, now working to commercialise bio-based materials for global buyers seeking alternatives to synthetic and traditional textiles.

Demand is coming from some of the biggest fashion brands, which are under intense pressure to cut back their reliance on fossil-based fibres and find materials that can be produced consistently at commercial scale.

Africa’s bio-based leather and textiles market is still small, accounting for about 5% of the global market, according to KelTex, but the company says it is growing at about 8% a year as fashion brands look for sustainable and traceable materials.

The Zanzibar-based firm is betting on seaweed to help it carve out market share, building a supply chain that draws on growers along the East African coast. KelTex’s engineers say the crop offers something rare in the biomaterials world: predictability.

Seaweed grows fast, requires no freshwater, fertiliser or land, and can be farmed by coastal communities with minimal equipment, a reliability that matters to buyers wary of supply collapsing with the next drought or pest cycle.

“Seaweed gives us a distinct scaling advantage,” Laetus Felix Buberwa, KelTex co-founder, told bird story agency. “It is cultivated specifically as our feedstock, reaches harvestable size in six to eight weeks, and needs no freshwater, fertiliser, or arable land.”

KelTex also notes that Tanzania produces about 92% of Africa’s seaweed, with Zanzibar home to roughly 25,000 farmers, about 90% of them women. Seaweed is already the archipelago’s third largest export after tourism and spices. The company says it is layering AI-driven cultivation and processing technologies onto this existing economy to increase yield and quality, creating what it calls a multiplier effect on farmers’ incomes.

Global fibre production reached about 132 million tonnes in 2024, with polyester alone accounting for roughly 59% of that total, meaning much of the fibre used in clothing still begins with fossil-based raw materials.

At the same time, the market for alternatives has continued to expand beyond experimental fabrics and laboratory samples. Buberwa says demand for sustainable leather alternatives is growing as footwear and fashion brands seek materials that meet environmental requirements without sacrificing performance or supply.

The global textile industry was worth about $1.6 trillion in 2023 and is projected to reach $3.3 trillion by 2030, according to UN Trade and Development. It produces between 2% and 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions and uses about 215 trillion litres of water a year, equivalent to roughly 86 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

That scale gives producers of new materials a multibillion-dollar window, but also raises the bar as the material still has to compete with incumbent fibres and leather that have established factories, buyers and supply chains around the world.

For African producers, part of the opportunity lies in what is already growing, being harvested, or being thrown away. Banana stems are often left in the field after the fruit is cut; most pineapple leaves are discarded after harvest; fish skins follow the same path in filleting plants; and seaweed is usually dried and sold raw with little value added.

Kenya’s fish-leather pioneers

Kenya’s fish-leather industry is among the continent’s most established, and firms adding value today show how a former by-product can become goods for the fashion and craft sectors.

At Victorian Foods in Kitale, fish skins from Nile perch are processed through a tannery before being turned into leather. James Ambani, the company’s chief executive, has long argued that the material offers an unusually easy path into the market because fish leather avoids the regulatory hurdles that come with exotic hides.

“Fish leather is considered exotic leather, like reptile leather — crocodile or snake leather, which is endangered,” Ambani has said. “You don’t require CITES, the permit you need to export leather from endangered species. So I think, as it gains popularity, there is going to be a lot of demand for it in the market.”

The company’s early attempts at processing fish skins were unsuccessful, but it kept experimenting and eventually improved its methods, including through training in Singapore. Victorian Foods now produces a wide mix of finished goods such as bags, shoes, belts, and jackets. Ambani says the piscine material is attracting interest beyond fashion, including from automotive interior manufacturers.

But processing fish leather is delicate work. Skins must be removed intact, cleaned, tanned, dyed and finished before they can be sold, creating employment around a material that once had little value.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation has promoted fish leather as part of its blue economy work, including a fashion showcase in Nairobi featuring designers using marine resources and by-products. In 2013, the FAO launched the Blue Growth Initiative, which seeks to balance the sustainable management of aquatic resources with economic and social benefits for local communities.

The drive to convert aquatic waste into market-ready hide extends to Kisumu, where Newton Owino, a leather chemist and director of Alisam Products Development, runs a mini tannery. He built his business after watching tons of fish skins rot near filleting factories, polluting Lake Victoria.

“All types of leather are useful,” Owino said, recalling how he started. “When I joined the fish leather venture, only nine filleting industries were operational, producing about 150,000 metric tonnes of fish waste. At one point, I went to Lake Victoria and found it piled with rotten fish waste. I told myself that instead of struggling to find cow and goat leather, I would do something with the available fish leather.”

Owino mobilised local women’s groups to collect and clean discarded skins, replacing harsh tanning agents like chromium oxide with natural plant extracts. Cassava leaves to strip odours and papaya enzymes to strengthen the hides.

Today, Alisam exports fish-leather items to online storefronts in New York, London and Australia. “Natural products are highly sought after in international markets,” Owino said. “There is money in the informal economy, and capital is in the mind.”

Fibre from the field

On land, banana pseudostems — the thick stalks left behind after the fruit is harvested — are creating a parallel avenue for value addition.

In Uganda, TEXFAD has developed a process for extracting fibre from these stems, working with smallholder farmers to turn what would otherwise be burned or left to rot into eco-friendly, biodegradable fibre used for rugs, placemats and hair extensions.

Banana is an obvious pivot for a country where the crop is a staple and farming is widespread, since the raw material doesn’t require separate cultivation. But turning that supply into an industry requires farmers to collect and sell the stems, transport them to processing facilities, and produce fibre consistently, and that has proven to be one of the sector’s main barriers.

Industrial-readiness research into Uganda’s banana fibre sector has found a wide gap between what farmers say they need to be paid for pseudostems and what processors currently offer, underscoring how much price incentives still shape farmer participation.

In Kenya’s pineapple belt, a Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution project in Thika has helped farmers turn discarded leaves into textile fibre.

More than 3,300 tonnes of leaf waste have produced over 100 tonnes of fibre, some exported to Vietnam and China. The volume is small compared with the global textile market, but it represents something the sector needs more than prototypes. A paying customer.

Down south, South Africa’s designers and material innovators are carving out their own space. TexTTan Industries, based in the Eastern Cape, is developing hemp and other bio-based textiles for clothing, construction, plastics and composite materials, describing its model as a vertically integrated business that sources raw materials from nearby farmers.

Meanwhile, Leafline, based in Bathurst in the Eastern Cape, has built a business using pineapple fibre in reusable sanitary products. Founder Candy Androliakos began experimenting after learning that pineapple leaves could be processed into a soft, cotton-like material, eventually opening a factory and creating local jobs.

And even with constraints around scale and predictable output, the combined activity in Kisumu, Kampala and the Eastern Cape is beginning to lift Africa’s biomaterials sector into the wider market.

On the coast of Zanzibar, where farmers tend their lines each morning and lift the seaweed into the light to check its growth, that proposition is already becoming tangible.