About us | Africraft

Welcome AfriCraft NGO!

Founded in 2004, our organization is dedicated to empowering poor communities and youth through waste collection and recycling. We believe that by creating jobs, we can support a sustainable future and a circular economy.

Our story began in a small home workshop with just two employees, but today we work with over 200 artisans across Tanzania.

We strive to provide our artisans with the necessary skills and resources to create unique, high-quality products from recycled materials. Our artisans use their talents to turn trash into treasure and give it a second life.

At AfriCraft, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to receive a fair wage for their work.

As a member of the World Fair Trade Organization, we adhere to strict principles and practices that promote fair trade and sustainable development. When you shop at AfriCraft, you can support our mission and contribute to the economic development of marginalized communities in Tanzania.

Our Vision

Our vision is a society in which young people take positive care of their environment and in which future prospects are created through motivated capacity building in the circular economy for a sustainable, self-determined life.

Our Focus

Reduce – Reuse – Recycle

Preserve – Culture – Community – Trade

Our Mission

Our aim is to develop and implement economically viable and replicable best practice examples by expanding production and generating income through recycling. The aim is to achieve a better standard of living through capacity building for young people.

The initiator of AfriCraft

Hello, my name is Meinolf Kuper, I am a business economist and health economist and I initiated AfriCraft in Tanzania in 2004. It was later founded as a non-profit NGO and also as a production and trading company. I have been involved in fair trade with Africa since 1981, building trade partnerships with African producers and partners on an equal footing.

Behind the foundation of AfriCraft are goals such as combining fair trade and environmental protection by producing and selling useful and beautiful products for daily use and for the design of the living environment from recycled materials.

I started trading in handicraft products from Africa in 1981. It was in what was then Upper Volta, where I spent four years as a development aid worker organizing the construction of health stations and at the same time started a distribution system for so-called ‘Bolga’ shopping baskets for the German market. Initially, ten baskets were sent by post every week from the capital Ouagadougou directly to the consumers, but demand quickly increased and the company ‘AFRICA Art of the people’, based in Rietberg in Westphalia, was founded. During further long-term stays abroad in Cameroon and Congo and trips to many other African countries, new supply structures were established, so that the product range in Germany grew steadily.

In order to make the supply structures in the countries sustainable, I initiated the establishment of non-profit producer cooperatives with the local partners: BURKINA CRAFT in Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta, SAHEL CRAFT in Nigeria and CAMCRAFT in Cameroon.

From 2003, the company name in Germany was changed to ‘AFRIKA Art & Design‘. The new name was intended to reflect the fact that the primary focus was no longer on rare handicrafts from Africa, but increasingly on everyday objects that reach a large number of consumers and feed a large number of producers. This was also the time when I went to Tanzania for nine years and, in addition to my consultancy work on the introduction of health insurance for the disadvantaged rural population, helped to set up the local producers’ cooperative ‘AfriCraft’ in Dar es Salaam. AfriCraft produces recycled, high-quality items for the home and garden and also offers training for young craftspeople.

As I became increasingly involved in and for Africa, I came to realize that development can only be achieved primarily through fair trade, which creates jobs and income in the countries. With this principle of ‘trade not aid’, I have now been leading the further expansion of trade with Africa into the next phase, the founding of AfriCraft in Germany, since 2016.