These are times when the rainfall regime of Ghana can at times be quite fickle, what with the Saharan and Sahelian drought gradually impinging upon this nation. Ecologists and economists are advocating a less rigid reliance on a monoculture of cocoa and arguing for a diversified economy having a strong component of rural-based traditional industry that will provide a regular income for the expanding non-literate and middle-level literate population. One such rural-based industry is the host of traditional textile crafts whose products served in the past as important markers of prestige, socio-economic and cultural status.These crafts are highly appreciated by foreign tourists, cultural museums and connoisseurs, private collectors and entrepreneurs with interest in marketing indigenous handicrafts. These crafts are crying to be revitalized by local craftsmen with the aid of local banks into viable round-the-year export earners.

The earliest type of Ghanaian fabric used for clothing, according to oral history, was made from the bark of the tree Antiaris sp, known to the Akan as Kyenkyen and the Dangme as Tsobo. Bark cloth is made by stripping long narrow pieces of Antiaris, softening them in water, laying the strips on a tree trunk and beating them with wooden mallets having corrugated heads.

Although bark cloth is now in disuse, it is still found in certain traditional cultural contexts. For instance some hunters wear bark cloth for their hunts. The Asantehene is known to use this attire for certain aspects of Odwira festival celebration. The Ga-Dangme have traditions of using bark cloth in pre-European times. Even when European merchants commenced the sale of imported cloth in 16th and 17th century La and Shai, in the Accra Plains, the use of bark cloth persisted. It used to be said – ‘Ke iye La mowo Tsobo,” meaning “he who will not visit La market, must needs wear bark cloth.