Small Beginnings
Kibébé was founded by an intercultural couple - Florisa and Innocent Magambi. Florisa is originally from Italy, Innocent was born a refugee from Burundi.
The couple started There is Hope Malawi in 2007, a charity that aims to empower refugees and local Malawians through vocational training programmes and college scholarships.
Kibébé was born out of There is Hope as its social enterprise branch, donating all profits to see their vision realised.
[Pic: Florisa & Innocent Magambi and their three boys.]
Production Process
Kibébé sources fabric from Lilongwe’s bustling open air fabric market where we support around 30 female sellers.
The design process starts with a rough sketch or picture, research to find the available haberdashery and sewing hardware and then a prototype. When this has been tried and tested, production begins.
All the production takes place in and around Dzaleka refugee camp, employed largely at our production rooms - or at their home-based business - where our artisans work on pedal sewing machines and by hand.
Kibébé now ships our popular products to our UK hub in London as well as to the USA via kibebe.com.
