About Our Company
Zuku’s founder and CEO, Steve Karowe, has been importing from Africa for over 35 years, working directly with artisans in Bolgatanga and helping to support over 5,000 weavers and their families. The positive impact on the artisans and their families is our top priority and guiding inspiration, reflected in every basket we ship to you.
Steve visits Africa regularly, gathering feedback from the weavers and others involved in the basket trade and maintaining a direct line of communication. Part of our Zuku team resides in Bolgatanga, allowing for an intimate and day-to-day connection with the community. We also fund goodwill projects, providing healthcare for villagers, school supplies for local children, and poverty reduction for people throughout the area through our non-profit organization, Weaving Hope Together.
Our small stateside Zuku team operates out of a tiny mountain town in Colorado where we all live, work, and, most importantly, play outside! We all love what we do and appreciate working with such unique, artistic, and functional baskets.
About Our Product
Every Zuku basket is entirely hand-made in Ghana. Woven from a local and perennial crop known as “elephant grass,” the river grass is gathered sustainably several times each rainy season without harming the whole plant, ensuring there will always be more ready to harvest the following year. The grass is dried for several weeks before weaving begins, and weavers carefully choose their grass based on the basket style they plan to create. The grass can then be twisted once, twice, or split and then twisted depending on what the weaver has in mind. Some grass is dyed at this point, allowing for beautiful and intricate color patterns. Finally, the meticulous and time-intensive weaving process ensues – it’s true artistry in action and takes between 2-5 days to complete. The last step is creating the leather handles from locally tanned goat skin, making use of the entire animal. Goat is a staple food in northern Ghana, so the meat goes towards sustenance, while leather workers utilize the skin to craft Bolga basket handles.
Basket weaving has helped bring much-needed income to the villages surrounding Bolgatanga, lifting their economy and preserving their cultural heritage. This traditional skill – harnessed over years of dedicated practice and handed down from generation to generation – employs approximately 10,000 people throughout the Upper East region of Ghana.
