Akwete Cloth

Akwete is a town in Ndoki, Ukwa East. The cloth that carries its name is woven by women on an upright loom called the Nkwe. Origin accounts name Dada Nwakata — also given as Nwakwata Nnadede — and speak of a dream or a late nineteenth-century innovation. Earlier threads were raffia and sisal. Later weavers took up imported cotton and silk.

The cloth is also called Akuruaku Ndoki and Mkpuru Akwete. It is woven as a full wrapper, slightly uneven, which is why a power loom does not reproduce it. By the 1890s pieces were already in European museums. Under Sam Mbakwe, between 1979 and 1983, an AWCOS complex was built for more than a hundred weavers. It later fell largely idle, and most weaving went back to the home, which is still where you are most likely to see a loom at work.