West Africa: Textile Queen Maman Creppy Has Died - the Last of West Africa's Legendary Wax Cloth Traders Has Left Her Mark

aged 89, was one of west Africa's most influential wax cloth traders. She was the youngest, and the last living,"Nana Benz" - the legendary first generation of women cloth traders from Togo.

The Nana Benzes, a group of about 15 Togolese women, started trading in the wax print. The word"Nana" is a diminutive form of"mother" or"grandmother" and"Benz" is for the Mercedes-Benz cars some of them liked to drive - and which they were able to buy due to their big success. Their craft however is sadly in decline. Since the early 2000s production of the cloth has shifted to Chinese factories. Today, no wax comes near the process.Born in the southern town of Aneho on 22 December 1934, Maman Creppy was determined to become a successful entrepreneur. She started her career trading beads imported from Ghana. But, as she recalled in one of our many conversations,"this was hard manual work".

They benefited from a unique trading position. Trade rules in some post-independence African countries made it hard to trade in the cloth. For instance in Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah's nationalist-protectionist policies placed high tariffs on imports. This made wax-print imports unprofitable. In Togo, low tariffs made the cloth cheaper. Nana Benzes therefore became a key part of the wax print trade and enabled the Dutch to penetrate other African markets.

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