Made in Memory: Why Craftsmanship Is Cultural Diplomacy

Zainab Ashadu
May 20
3 min read

by Zainab Ashadu – Conscious Speaker, Cultural Leader, Founder of Zashadu

A few years into building Zashadu my luxury brand rooted in Nigeria’s artisanal heritage, I started noticing a pattern.

Powerful people, mostly men: fashion insiders, business moguls — would pull me aside and say,“Zainab, don’t make the bags in Nigeria. It’ll be too hard.”“Go to Mexico, go to Italy. I know someone who can help you.”

They meant well. But something in me resisted.

I hadn’t grown up romanticizing Nigeria. I was raised in Lagos until age 12, then spent much of my life abroad, including studying at London College of Fashion. London taught me how to navigate the global creative industry. But it also glass-ceilinged me. It taught me how far I could rise — but only so far, and only a certain way.

So when I returned home to start Zashadu, I knew I didn’t want to recreate old models of success.I wanted to build something rooted, something human and whole.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I do now: I was choosing sacred leadership. I was choosing to honor craft not just as an aesthetic, but as a spiritual, cultural, and political act.

Craftsmanship Is a Sacred Act of Remembrance

When an artisan works, whether stitching leather, dyeing cloth, weaving thread; They enter a flow state that is meditative, trancelike and even holy.

Their body moves as their mind stills. The ego softens and the Divine enters.

This is the work I witness daily at Zashadu. Each piece we create carries beauty, AND presence. Even when the materials are identical, I can feel the energy of the hands that made it.

Because craftsmanship holds memory.

Not just skill or tradition but ancestral, emotional, embodied memory. It tells the story of land, of people, of identity.

And when you remove a people’s ability to craft, you begin to erase their essence.

Artisans Are Cultural Gatekeepers

Craft has long been dismissed as “lowly” work because it happens close to the ground.But the Earth is not low: The Earth is holy.

The artisan is close to the Earth, and therefore, close to Spirit.

In the modern world, we’ve been conditioned to associate “development” with speed, skyscrapers, digital advancement. But true development, soul-led development begins with remembering our original technologies:

The hand
The breath
The rhythm of repetition
The intuition that guides form into being

Craft is one of the oldest technologies of spiritual expression and artisans are the living vessels that carry it forward.

Why Craftsmanship Is Cultural Diplomacy

Cultural diplomacy is often thought of in terms of embassies, international relations, or art exhibitions. But I believe it starts with the artisan.

Every stitch, every tool, every material chosen with intention, becomes a transmission of values. It tells the world who we are. What we remember. What we are willing to fight for.

In Nigeria, and across the African continent, craftsmanship is the heartbeat of cultural identity.

To preserve it is to honor our legacy.

To elevate it is to shape our future.

At Zashadu, we are not in the business of chasing trends. We are in the business of preserving memory. We build luxury with meaning and we lead with reverence.