The Khanga/Kanga/Leso is a traditional cotton cloth with mixed designs, colors and messages worn by women along the coastal regions of Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. The popularization of the Khanga can be traced back to 1887, when the Kaderdina family founded the Hajee Essak Limited company, which pioneered the mass production of the Khanga in Kenya. The Khanga has a patterned border called pindo, surrounding central motif called mji and a Swahili saying, proverb, slogan or idiom called jina. It is approximately 150cm in length and 110cm wide. It is made in pairs called pande, and is very accessible and affordable. It can be used for various purposes including as wraps, scarves, wall-hangings, turbans, outfits, duvet covers, in ceremonies, or for political campaigns, amongst others. Khangas are usually given to brides and new mothers as a show of love, appreciation, warning or guidance and the meanings of the Khanga are derived from both the design and majina on them. The jina are often poetic or derived from existing proverbs or idioms, and as such they serve as a concrete way of passing down oral sayings from one generation to the next. On the ALMEDA project, we are considering the jina components as a subgenre of oral literary forms. By cataloguing Khangas’ jina, our new postdoctoral fellow Gloria Ajami Makokha hopes to create a linked open data network on these everyday sayings, passed primarily between women and girls, to existing research on East Africans oral cultures.
ONLINE REFERENCES
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/kanga-a-cloth-that-unites/fwLSRgiEQNcJLA
https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/magazines/woman/origin-of-kangas-in-tanzania-2510126
https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2017/kangas-woven-voices
Ashleigh Harris will present ALMEDA’s work with ‘Messy Data’ at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen at 15:00 on 6 May 2026. Abstract: A significant portion of African Literature and expressive cultures – from the late 19th century to the present – has been produced as print, audio, video,…
Join us for a talk by Ashleigh Harris on the ways in which the ALMEDA project uses Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web to create sustainable data on African Literature and expressive culture.
We are delighted to invite you to this symposium, which focuses on the ways in which audiovisual archives and film historiography in African and diasporic contexts are entangled with one another. Bringing together film and screen media scholars, filmmakers, curators, and archivists, the symposium will explore the impact of…
Join us for a symposium organised by ALMEDA postdoctoral fellow, Gloria Ajami Makokha, on the ‘Materialities of Oral Cultures in East Africa’.