Canex Wknd festival in Algiers showcases African fashion’s “soft power”

Canex, the acronym of Creation Africa Nexus, is a familiar name for regulars of the Tranoï trade show in Paris. In the last two years, the Parisian event has dedicated an entire room of its Palais Brongniart venue each season to showcase 20 designers of African origin. At Tranoï’s September session, labels like Sukeina, Lagos Space Programme and Thebe Magugu staged runway shows.

But Canex’s ambition goes far beyond giving visibility to African designers. Canex Wknd was backed by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), and was held on October 16-19 at the Safex exhibition centre but also in various sites across Algiers. It brought together athletes, musicians, artists, professionals from the media, film and food industries and, of course, fashion designers.

The latter, most of whom were presenting their collections for the first time at Canex, showcased their looks at a runway show inside the lush botanical garden of Algiers. The show was a melting pot of creativity from all over the continent, tapping the talents and creative vibrancy of designers from the Maghreb, East Africa, West Africa and countries of the South. In the same spirit, a line-up of internationally renowned bands staged a gig: Tinariwen (from Algeria and Mali), The Scorpion Kings (from South Africa), Sofiya Nzau (from Kenya), and Ayra Starr (from Nigeria).

As in Canex Wknd’s previous two editions, held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cairo, Egypt, pan-African interaction was encouraged within different cultural industries through meetings, round-table debates, a trade fair exhibiting traditional local know-how, and cookery masterclasses.

Canex’s goal is to develop these different industries, promoting a proactive and positive image of Africa. Like the ‘soft power’ deployed by South Korea through Hallyu, the Korean cultural trend in music, fashion, cinema and cuisine, Canex’s vision is to propagate contemporary African culture and to disseminate it globally, relying on the energy of the continent and its diasporas. Canex Wknd was therefore also a business occasion, putting in touch entrepreneurs with potential investors, the vast majority of them African.