10 Textile Traditions of Côte d'Ivoire Children Can Discover
By Nicka·
Côte d'Ivoire, also known in English as Ivory Coast, is a West African country with a rich variety of textile traditions. Across different regions and communities, artists and craftspeople have worked with cotton, raffia, bark, dye, paint, looms, and narrow woven strips to create cloth for everyday life, celebration, ceremony, and cultural expression.
For children, textiles offer a wonderful way to explore a country. Cloth can lead to questions about geography, materials, artistic techniques, family knowledge, history, and community traditions.
In Discover Africa Through Its Prints: Côte d'Ivoire, young readers ages 8 and up explore ten textile traditions from different parts of the country. Each tradition offers another way to see how diverse Côte d'Ivoire really is.
Real Cloths, Living Traditions
Most of the photographs on this page come from Nicka's personal textile collection; others are credited individually. They offer a glimpse of the variety of color, pattern, texture, and craftsmanship found across Ivorian textile traditions.
Textile traditions are living traditions. Two cloths may share the same traditional name or belong to the same broader tradition while still differing in color, pattern, arrangement, materials, or details.
Differences may reflect the maker, community, time period, occasion, available materials, or artistic choice. No single photograph or illustration should be understood as representing every version of a textile tradition.
1. Korhogo Cloth
Korhogo cloth is associated with northern Côte d'Ivoire and the Senufo artistic tradition. Artists paint bold pictures of animals, people, and celestial symbols onto cloth made from narrow strips of handwoven cotton, using plant dyes and iron-rich mud. Traditionally, women spin the cotton and prepare the dyes, while men weave and paint. Korhogo cloth shows the difference between weaving a cloth and decorating its surface afterward.
2. Baoulé Cloth
Baoulé cloth, also called pagne baoulé, comes from central Côte d'Ivoire. In Bomizambo, near Tiébissou, weavers turn dyed cotton threads into narrow strips on hand looms, then sew the strips into one wide cloth, a craft passed from father to son. In 2023, Ivorian loincloth weaving, including Baoulé weaving, was added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Look closely, and you may find where the strips were joined.
3. Dida Raffia Cloth
In the Divo area of southwestern Côte d'Ivoire, Dida women make cloth from raffia palm fiber, weaving it by hand without a loom. They tie parts of the cloth tightly and dye it in warm forest colors: yellow for joy, red for strength, and black for power. When untied, the cloth reveals circles and squares inspired by a panther's coat. Not every cloth begins with cotton thread.
4. Dyula / Waraniéné Cloth
In Waraniéné, a village near Korhogo, Dyula weavers make long, narrow cotton bands on wooden looms, usually 15 to 16 centimeters wide, and sew them together. Long ago this cloth was plain white, and Senufo artists in nearby Fakaha painted it to create Korhogo cloth. Today, Waraniéné weavers also make colorful cloth, bags, shirts, and even shoes. Two neighboring communities share one textile story.
5. Bété Tapa Cloth
Bété Tapa, also called Glôkô, comes from the Daloa and Gagnoa areas of west-central Côte d'Ivoire. It is made not from thread but from tree bark, beaten again and again with a wooden tool until it softens into a sheet of cloth, then dried in the sun to a natural beige. Today it is rare and worn for special occasions such as traditional weddings. Barkcloth surprises many children, because it challenges the idea that all cloth begins as thread.
6. Gouro / Kamandjè
In villages around Sinfra, in central-western Côte d'Ivoire, Gouro weavers create a cloth called Kamandjè. Weaving a single Kamandjè can take several weeks of careful handwork, so each cloth is unique. It is worn at important life ceremonies, and its patterns carry meaning passed down by elders. UNESCO's 2023 recognition of traditional weaving in Côte d'Ivoire includes Gouro weaving.
7. Malinké / Dalaba
In Odienné, in northwestern Côte d'Ivoire, Malinké weavers create a traditional cloth called Dalaba, woven in narrow strips on a hand loom and sewn into a full-sized cloth. The city holds special Dalaba celebration days, with weaving lessons for young people and women. Because Dalaba's historic patterns are still incompletely documented, the design in the book is inspired by the documented tradition rather than copied from one historic pattern. That is a lesson in itself: learning about culture means being curious, and careful about what we claim to know.
8. N'zima / Appolo / Kita
The N'zima, also called Appolo, live mainly in southeastern Côte d'Ivoire, including the historic town of Grand-Bassam. Every October or November they celebrate the Abissa Festival to mark the N'zima new year, a tradition kept for more than 200 years. During the festival, people wear Kita, a colorful patterned cloth woven in narrow strips and shared by several Akan peoples of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. Kita also holds a special place in this book's story: it is the cloth the author's son chose to wear when he visited Côte d'Ivoire.
9. Abron / Kanguélé
In the village of Kanguélé, near Bondoukou in northeastern Côte d'Ivoire, Abron and Koulango families live side by side. The Abron weavers there have kept their craft alive for generations, weaving cloth by hand in narrow blue-and-white bands. It is worn for important occasions, both joyful celebrations and times of mourning. Abron bands are narrower than Baoulé bands, so the two make an interesting comparison.
10. Yacouba / Gbahou
Near the city of Man, in the mountains of western Côte d'Ivoire, weavers create a striped cloth called Gbahou, traditionally made of white cotton with blue and black stripes colored with plant dyes. According to tradition, the first Gbahou was woven by a weaver named Tokpa in the village of Zagoué. It is worn for important ceremonies and traditional rites among the Dan (Yacouba) people. Researchers do not all agree on where the pattern first developed, a reminder that some questions stay open.
More Than Ten Beautiful Cloths
These ten traditions are not meant to represent every textile tradition in Côte d'Ivoire.
They are an invitation to begin exploring.
Textile traditions are living traditions. They can change over time, move between communities, develop through trade and family knowledge, and appear in different colors or patterns. Cultural boundaries are not always the same as modern regional boundaries.
That is why learning about textiles should involve both curiosity and respect.
Children can ask:
- What material was used?
- Was the cloth woven, painted, dyed, or made from bark or raffia?
- Where is the tradition connected geographically?
- What similarities and differences do we notice?
- What can we observe without inventing a meaning that has not been documented?
These kinds of questions turn a piece of cloth into a doorway to geography, history, art, and cultural understanding.
Discover Côte d'Ivoire Through Its Prints
Discover Africa Through Its Prints: Côte d'Ivoire is an illustrated cultural activity book for children ages 8 and up.
Each textile tradition is presented through a learning page and a corresponding coloring activity, inviting children to look closely, learn about the people and places connected with the cloth, and then engage creatively with what they have discovered.
The goal is simple:
See the cloth. Learn the story. Color the design.
Sources
The information in this article comes from the research behind the book. Web sources were consulted in 2026.
- UNESCO. "Traditional skills of loincloth weaving in Côte d'Ivoire." Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, 2023.
- Encyclopædia Britannica. "Korhogo." Whitworth University Art Collection, Korhogo cloth catalog record. Brown University, "Off the Roll: Korhogo Textile (Senufo)."
- Ministère du Tourisme de Côte d'Ivoire, "Le village de tisserands de Bomizambo." Rezo Ivoire, "Bomizambo, la cité du pagne Baoulé."
- Agence Ivoirienne de Presse (via Djasso), "Dalaba 2021 : Odienné célèbre son pagne traditionnel," May 2021.
- Journal du Nord-Est ivoirien, "Kanguélé : le pagne traditionnel abron en perte de vitesse," September 2015. Petit Futé, "Kanguélé."
- Fofana, Soumaïla. "Le pagne traditionnel raphia en pays dida et godié : expression cosmogonique ou vision symbolique." Revue Hybrides (RALSH), September 2024, pp. 421 to 435.
- Soro, Batjeni Kassoum. "Le pagne tissé de Waraniéné : valeurs d'un savoir-faire." Akofena, no. 9, vol. 1, August 2023, pp. 3 to 12. Samuel, Isaac. "The empire of Kong (ca. 1710 to 1915)." African History Extra, July 2024.
- Wikipédia, "Bétés." Encyclopædia Universalis, "Tapa."
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, "Historic Town of Grand-Bassam." Fraternité Matin, "Grand-Bassam : L'Abissa ou le Nouvel an pour le peuple N'zima Kotoko," September 2015. Rezo Ivoire, "L'origine et la célébration de l'Abissa."
- Le Patriote, "Mode et tradition : le 'Boubou Yacouba'," January 23, 2009 (Abidjan.net). Africanews, report on traditional Dan cloth in Man, January 19, 2018.