Nigerian startup Sokofa is a marketplace connecting diaspora buyers across Europe and North America with verified African artisans and small vendors across fashion, art, and beauty.
Founded late last year, Sokofa provides access to fashion listings that let a buyer enter their own measurements directly on the product page, up to 16 specific fields depending on the garment, and have the piece cut by hand by the actual vendor, not a factory running standard sizes.
The same listings carry an AI virtual try-on tool, where a buyer uploads a photo and gets a generated preview of the outfit on them in under 25 seconds, with the photo deleted after 24 hours.
“The vendors are independent artisans currently based in Africa, selling Ankara sets, Adire chords, kaftans, and traditional native wear, verified by Sokofa before they are allowed to list. It is a small, real example of an African startup solving the fit and trust problem that diaspora shoppers have dealt with for years, using a mix of straightforward custom order infrastructure and AI rather than either alone,” founder Tope Abuloye told Disrupt Africa.
At its core, Abuloye said Sokofa is about putting Africa on the map in global e-commerce “on its own terms”.
“Diaspora buyers wanting authentic African fashion, art, and beauty have had two weak options: generic marketplaces with no fit guarantee or vendor verification, or relying on word of mouth tailors back home with long lead times and no buyer protection,” said Abuloye.
“We wanted African artisans to
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