The Minister of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, Barr. Hannatu Musawa has said that the innovative creativity by ‘Fashion Academy’, using scraps from material clothing, will gain $100 billion for the country’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP), .
Speaking on Tuesday in Abuja, during a program on Scrap to Bank (S2B), (a women’s economic empowerment and poverty alleviation initiative targeted at women all over Nigeria), Musawa said, the idea and the impact of the creativity, is not only going to have impact in the economy but to Nigerians at large.
“Because you know, taking scraps and turning them into something that is usable, something tangible that can be sold in a way that it will really impact the economy, is absolutely amazing. And it would also help because, this government is really bent on seeing what we can do to put back on climate change. So this is one aspect which we can partner.
“All these crafts are being turned to waste and it’s being thrown away, which creates a lot of pollution on our streets and in our cities. So this initiative, would be able to take, turn it into something that could be useful to the community, which could help export us as a people around our culture because these graphs are really the top history and exhibiting its touch of African artistically.
“And for so many reasons like climate change, this is what we as a ministry can support, how we can help ourselves to make the best of this opportunity and this would help elevate a lot of negative energy and empower a huge sections of Nigerian youths.
“So we as a ministry, will want to maximize on the platform that we have to speak out to the fashion industries across the nation to channel the scrap as resources to you and at the same time I want to see if I can have an inter-ministerial collaboration. Perhaps, that could help with the Ministry of Trade and Investments, so we need more women, to impact more. And also the ministry of Foreign Affairs, to see how we can take this beautiful expression of Nigeria and Africa to the diaspora.
“So I think it has many benefits not only meeting the need individual women that are doing it or their immediate families, but also their immediate communities, as well as the nation at large and to add to that, the ministry is working towards establishing fund that will enable this project to be successful,” the Minister stated.
According to one of the organizers, the Founder/CEO Fashion Academy, Nina Kwande, said the aims and objectives of the project, is to be creative, to teach and train people in general especially the women folks to be more creative in their skills and useful to themselves.