Lydiana Imagination Solutions — Malawi

Woven by women

A weaver-owned cooperative rebuilding what a Malawian basket is worth.

The gap — why we exist

$48 a month

What a weaver earns for work that fills every hour of daylight. Middlemen hold the market. The maker holds no bargaining power.

01200,000+ weavers affected in Malawi — 3M+ across Africa

The model

She owns a share

Fair pay, design training and direct market access — inside a cooperative the weavers themselves own.

02Weaver → cooperative → quality control → client. No middlemen.

The founder

Lydia Figuereido

“We offer them fair wages, design training and cooperative ownership.”

03Founder & CEO — BSc Psychology, 3+ years civic leadership

The cooperative

A team, not a supply chain

Weavers, quality control, sales and strategy — a Malawian team building a business that belongs to its makers.

04Leadership, production quality, sales and strategy — all Malawian

Every coil is someone's income

Order. Partner. Back the weavers.

Get in touch

Our story

A basket is a wage

Malawi's coiled baskets are among the finest handwork in the region. The women who make them are the people who earn least from them. A weaver can fill every hour of daylight and still take home about $48 a month, because the market between her and the buyer is held by middlemen.

The cooperative was built to close that distance. It buys directly from its weavers and pays them fairly. It trains them in design and colour — including the coloured dyes Malawian weavers have not had access to. And it gives them ownership: the women who weave the baskets hold a share of the business that sells them.

Alongside the weaving, the cooperative works in biodiversity — specifically the preservation of indigenous trees, the living material this craft depends on.

“So my business is a cooperative for women basket weavers. We offer them fair wages, design training and cooperative ownership.”
Lydia Figuereido — Founder & CEO

A weaver standing beside two large coiled lidded hampers in a garden in Malawi — Finished lidded hampersMalawi

The gap

The $48 problem

$48

Typical monthly earnings for a Malawian weaver working full daylight hours

$5M+

Crafts market controlled by middlemen, leaving weavers with zero bargaining power

200,000+

Weavers affected in Malawi

3M+

Weavers affected across Africa

Figures as cited by the cooperative — World Bank Report on Africa, 2022; Expert Market Research, 2025

What we do

Four commitments

Fair wages

Weavers are paid directly and fairly for every piece, instead of being squeezed by a chain of middlemen who set the price.

Design training

Training in design and colour — including the coloured dyes Malawian weavers have not had access to — so the work can meet international taste without losing its own language.

Cooperative ownership

Members hold a share of the business. The women who weave the baskets own the company that sells them, and share in what it earns.

Indigenous tree preservation

The cooperative works in biodiversity alongside weaving, with a focus on preserving the indigenous trees this craft grows out of.

Craftsmanship

Made one coil at a time

A weaver lifting a tall coiled hamper worked in a checkerboard pattern — Lidded hamper Checkerboard coil, natural and bark

A weaver holding a large woven serving plate with a two-tone radial pattern — Wall & serving plate Two-tone radial, hung or laid

A pair of conical lidded storage baskets woven in cream and rose — Conical storage pair Rose dye on natural

A weaver at the workshop with a finished basket and a woven hat — Workshop basket & hat Dash stitch, open weave

A weaver seated on the ground coiling palm fibre into a new basket — Coiling by hand Where every piece starts

A lidded coiled basket worked in a rose and natural checkerboard pattern, standing on grass — Lidded basket Dyed checkerboard, rose and natural

How people live with it

Art, not just storage

An art gallery interior in Malawi: coiled woven plates arranged on shelves against an orange wall, large woven wall pieces on the white wall, beside a bookcase — On display — art gallery, MalawiCooperative work

A coiled plate is a wall piece. A lidded hamper is a floor sculpture that happens to hold laundry.

The work is shown as art: on display in an art gallery in Malawi, hung on the wall and set out on shelves rather than stacked in a market pile.

It is also why colour matters, and why design training sits at the centre of the model. Dyed pattern is what carries a coiled basket from a market stall to a gallery wall.

Sold direct: online to individual buyers, and wholesale to galleries, hotels and lodges, and corporate gift buyers — with no chain of middlemen taking the margin that belongs to the weaver.

Impact so far

What has changed

Milestone

11 weavers recruited

Eleven women are now working through the cooperative rather than through middlemen.

Milestone

Pay up 125%

Weavers' pay has more than doubled since joining — the single number this business exists to move.

Milestone

50 baskets sold

Sold directly online and to business buyers, with quality control and packaging handled by the cooperative.

Route to market

Weaver → cooperative → client

Direct online sales to individuals, wholesale to hotels, lodges and corporate gift companies. No layer in between taking the margin.

The women

Whose hands these are

A weaver seated outdoors, coiling palm fibre into the base of a new basket — Coiling the base — the first rows set the shape of everything above them

A weaver at the workshop holding a finished basket and a woven hat — At the workshop with finished work, ready for quality control

A weaver with two completed lidded hampers in a garden — Two completed hampers — roughly a fortnight of coiling

The team

Who runs it

Portrait of Lydia Figuereido — Lydia Figuereido

Founder & CEO

BSc Psychology · 3+ years civic leadership

Portrait of Olivia Anthony — Olivia Anthony

Production & Quality Control Manager

Dip Accounting · 5 years quality assurance

Portrait of Innocent Mtanga — Innocent Mtanga

Customer Acquisition & Sales Manager

10+ years sales experience

Portrait of Dalitso Mbendera — Dalitso Mbendera

Business Strategy Advisor

6+ years national security & public policy

Why it matters

A basket outlives the hands that made it

Coiled basketry in Malawi is passed down, not taught in a classroom. A woman learns it from the woman before her, and the pattern she chooses is a piece of a place. That knowledge is not at risk because people stopped caring about it. It is at risk because it stopped paying.

When a weaver earns what her work is worth, three things follow at once: a household gets a reliable income, a craft keeps its next generation, and the trees the craft depends on become worth protecting rather than clearing. That is the whole argument for this cooperative, and it is why ownership — not charity — is the part that matters.

Buying one basket is not a donation. It is the market working the way it should have in the first place.

Connect

Talk to the cooperative

Phone

+265 992 872 818

+265 894 578 737

lydiafiguereido4@gmail.com

Post

P.O. Box 51210
Malawi

Work with us

Every order is a wage.

Email the cooperative Call +265 992 872 818

Woven by women

$48 a month

She owns a share

Lydia Figuereido

A team, not a supply chain

Order. Partner. Back the weavers.

A basket is a wage

The $48 problem

Four commitments

Fair wages

Design training

Cooperative ownership

Indigenous tree preservation

Made one coil at a time

Art, not just storage

What has changed

11 weavers recruited

Pay up 125%

50 baskets sold

Weaver → cooperative → client

Whose hands these are

Who runs it

Lydia Figuereido

Olivia Anthony

Innocent Mtanga

Dalitso Mbendera

A basket outlives the hands that made it

Talk to the cooperative

Every order is a wage.