AFLIMBA

In 2018, Plante Josue embarked on a mission to empower rural artisans starting from Rwanda. Growing up in the suburbs of Kigali, and his mother being a tailor who earned pennies from her perfect craft, he witnessed their immense talent but also recognized the barriers firsthand. These artisans, tucked away in remote communities, lack access to markets beyond their neighborhoods, information about trends and funds to fuel their creative ideas. Driven by a desire to rewrite his hometown narrative, AFLIMBA was born. AFLIMBA, an eco-friendly creative space to nurture talents of young girls who dropped out of school and single mothers in rural communities. Their shared aspiration? To make a decent living through sewing. Our main goal is to enhance their livelihoods. Fast-forward to 2022: Our team, driven by a commitment to address critical issues in Rwandan society, pushed the boundaries even further. We set our sights on recycling harmful textile waste. At the core of human needs lie the essentials: food, produced from soil, water, and air. These same elements sustain our lives. However, among the top pollutants affecting these vital components, textile waste stands out. Shockingly, approximately 92 million tonnes of textile waste end up in landfills each year—equivalent to a garbage truck being dumped every second. And yet, only 1% of this waste is recycled. Our mission became clear: take action. In our research, we discovered that while jeans are a staple in nearly every wardrobe worldwide, they are also one of the least eco-friendly fabrics. Consider this: China’s Xintang province alone churns out around 300 million pairs of jeans annually. Denim’s enduring popularity shows no signs of waning. At AFLIMBA, we’ve positioned ourselves at the final stage of the denim lifecycle. Our mission? To collect discarded jeans and ingeniously repurpose them into high-quality bags aptly named “KINTSUGI LIMBAGS.”