Craft and Basket Weaving Tours in Uganda: Watch, Try, Buy

Hands-on workshops with women’s weaving and bark-cloth cooperatives near Bwindi, Lake Bunyonyi and Kampala.

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A craft and basket weaving visit in Uganda means sitting in a working women's workshop rather than browsing a stall: raffia, banana fibre, papyrus and beadwork, plus bark cloth, which UNESCO lists as intangible cultural heritage. Ride 4 a Woman at Buhoma, the Bigodi women's group and the Kampala craft markets are where most visitors meet it.

A Guide to Craft and Basket Weaving in Uganda

Researched and written in house. No operator contributed to this guide or paid to appear in it.

What a Craft and Basket Weaving Tour Involves

A craft and basket weaving tour in Uganda is a sitting rather than a shopping trip. You go to a workshop where a group of women are already working, watch the coil go round, get handed raffia and make something conspicuously worse than theirs, and buy from the shelf at the end. An hour is normal. Two is better.

The distinction worth holding on to is between a workshop and a stall. A stall sells you an object. A workshop sells you the hour, and the money goes to the person whose hands you watched. Almost every group doing this in Uganda is a women's association, which follows from who does the weaving and who controls the income from it.

Craft rarely gets its own day. It attaches to a gorilla trek, a village walk or a last morning in Kampala, which is a sensible way to treat it.

Bark Cloth on a Buganda Craft Tour

Bark cloth, olubugo, is the craft Uganda is known for internationally, and it is not woven at all. The inner bark of the mutuba tree, Ficus natalensis, is cut in the wet season and beaten with grooved wooden mallets until it stretches into a soft sheet the colour of terracotta. The tree is wrapped and recovers, and can be harvested again year after year.

Making it is a Baganda craft held traditionally by the Ngonge clan under a hereditary chief craftsman, producing for the royal family and for the wider community. Bark cloth is worn at coronations and funerals, and UNESCO placed the practice on its intangible cultural heritage list. Cheap imported cotton has done what missionary disapproval failed to do and pushed it to the margins, so the makers still working are few and worth finding.

You are most likely to see beating demonstrated in the Buganda districts around Kampala and Mpigi, and to see finished cloth at the craft markets and at the Uganda Museum. Ask an operator for a bark cloth maker by name rather than for crafts, and you get a different day.

Materials, and Why Bwindi Baskets Come From Inside the Park

Ugandan baskets are built from what grows within walking distance: raffia and palm leaf, banana fibre, sisal, papyrus from the wetlands, millet and sorghum stalk for the coil core. Colour comes from dyed strips worked in as the coil turns, which is why the patterns are geometric rather than painted on.

At Bwindi the supply chain is unusual. Registered forest societies from the parishes bordering the park may enter defined multiple use zones and harvest specified resources, basketry materials among them, with off take recorded after each season. The arrangement exists because the park was gazetted over land people were already using, and a total lockout was never going to hold. A basket bought at Buhoma may be made of material taken legally from inside a national park, which is rarer than the price suggests.

What the pieces on the shelf are usually made of

Coiled bowls and lidded baskets. A stalk or grass core bound with raffia or palm strip. The tight ones take days and the price should reflect it.

Banana fibre. Dried sheath from the stem, used for mats, dolls, table pieces and increasingly for paper. The most common material in central Uganda and the cheapest.

Papyrus. Wetland reed, used for mats and larger storage pieces. Comes from the same swamps as the birding, which is a fair conversation to have with a weaver.

Bark cloth. Not a weave. Beaten sheet, sold as wall hangings, bags and panels, and the one material with international heritage recognition behind it.

Beadwork. Glass and recycled paper beads, strongest in Karamoja where beaded collars are worn rather than made for sale.

Weaving Groups Worth a Stop on a Southwest Safari

Ride 4 a Woman in Buhoma town, at the edge of Bwindi, is the best known. Over three hundred women from eleven villages use it, and weaving, sewing, drumming and a microloan fund share one compound. You can sit down and be taught badly for as long as you like.

The Buhoma community village walk takes in a weaving and tailoring centre as one of its stops, run through the local development association. At Bigodi, beside Kibale, the women's group attached to the KAFRED association sells at the end of the village walk, and those takings have gone into school building, boreholes and household loans for three decades.

Igongo Cultural Centre at Biharwe, near Mbarara, holds western Uganda's largest artefact collection and runs craft sessions beside the museum, which makes it a useful stop on the long drive southwest.

Beadwork and Karamoja Craft Tours in the Northeast

Craft in Karamoja works differently, because much of it is still worn. Beaded collars, wrist and ankle work, hide and metal pieces are part of daily dress rather than production for visitors, and a homestead visit is where you see them being made. Buying is possible and the etiquette is to go through the guide rather than pointing at what someone is wearing.

Trips here pair with Kidepo Valley, since the drive up is long and the two share a route.

Kampala Craft Markets on a City Tour

The craft markets in Kampala are the last morning solution and they are perfectly good at that. Exposure Africa on Buganda Road is the largest, a covered run of stalls carrying basketry, bark cloth, batik, carving, leather and beadwork. The craft village outside the National Theatre is smaller and less frantic.

Be clear about what these are. Traders buy in, and stock includes Kenyan and Congolese work beside Ugandan. Nothing wrong with that unless nobody says so, and most stalls answer straight if you ask where a piece was made. Prices are negotiable here in a way they are not at a village group. Our Kampala city tour guide covers where these sit in a day.

Buying Well on a Craft Tour

Four rules that make the purchase worth more than the object

Buy at the group, not from the roadside. At a village association the weaver is paid directly. Anywhere else there is at least one margin between you and her.

Pay the asking price at a community shop. Prices there are set by the association, not opened for negotiation, and pushing a basket down by a dollar after a safari that cost thousands reads exactly as it sounds.

Look at the coil, not the colour. Tight, even coiling with no gaps is the work. Bright dye is cheap to add and the fastest way to disguise a rushed piece.

Carry small notes. No card machine exists at these workshops, and changing a large note can take a village.

Arranging a Craft or Weaving Visit

The weaving groups covered here work year round, and most operators will fold a workshop visit into an itinerary if you ask for it by name.

How to get a craft visit into a trip

Start from a related activity. Our community tourism and cultural tour guides cover village walks that include a weaving or tailoring stop.

Name the group and the time. Ride 4 a Woman at Buhoma, the Bigodi women's group, a bark cloth maker near Mpigi. Add how long you want there, because an hour and ten minutes are different visits.

Or write to us directly. Send what you are after through the enquiry page and it goes to operators who run that region, rather than to us to sell you something.

Frequently Asked Questions About Craft and Weaving Tours

What should a good basket cost? At a community workshop, a small coiled bowl is usually a few dollars and a large lidded basket runs to the low tens, with the price set by the association rather than by haggling. Kampala market stalls open higher and expect negotiation. Nothing here moves the budget of a safari, and our cost guide covers the parts that do.

Can I actually learn to weave in an hour? You will learn the start of a coil and produce something lopsided. That is the honest answer and it is also the fun of it. The women teaching have been doing it since childhood and are generous about the gap.

Will a basket survive the flight home? Coiled baskets are tougher than they look and pack well with clothes stuffed inside them. Bark cloth travels flat and creases permanently, so roll it. Nothing here is restricted at customs, unlike plant material or anything made from an animal.

How do I know it was made locally? Ask, and ask at the workshop rather than the stall. At a village group you are watching the production, which settles it. In a Kampala market, traders stock regionally and a straight question usually gets a straight answer.

When is the best time of year to visit a weaving group? Any month, since the work is indoors and continuous. The one timing point is agricultural: at planting and harvest, fewer members are at the workshop because they are in the field. Our best time to visit guide covers the seasons.