The Fashion Law Institute, Africa (FLIAfrica), Africa’s first dedicated fashion law institution, founded in 2021 has successfully embedded fashion law into the existing curriculum of the National Diploma Two (ND2) Fashion Design programme at the School of Art, Design and Printing, Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech). Classes commenced in April 2026, making Yabatech the first polytechnic in Nigeria to formally integrate fashion law into its fashion design curriculum.
- +Fashion law added to Yaba College of Technology’s curriculum
The initiative was made possible by Sade Thompson, Head of Department, Department of Fashion Design at Yabatech whose openness to the partnership and institutional leadership were decisive in bringing fashion law into the classroom.
The initiative was made possible by Sade Thompson, Head of Department, Department of Fashion Design at Yabatech whose openness to the partnership and institutional leadership were decisive in bringing fashion law into the classroom. Thompson championed the integration from the first conversation, working with FLIAfrica to ensure the content aligned with the existing curriculum and met the needs of ND2 students at the critical stage of their professional formation.
“I look forward to collaborating on ways that our students can benefit from this expertise. We are open to having workshops and seminars and I am glad we have been able to create this space,” Sade Thompson, head of department, Fashion Design, Yaba College of Technology, said
Nigeria’s fashion and creative economy is the second-highest employer of labour after agriculture, yet the industry has received a fraction of the structured education investment that other sectors command. At the peak of Nigeria’s garment manufacturing era in the 1980s, the industry employed 350,000 skilled workers. By 2016, the number of certified fashion professionals on record had fallen to just 27,000, a structural gap that informal training alone cannot close. FLIAfrica’s FLIP programme addresses a specific dimension of that gap: the absence of legal literacy at the point of professional formation.
Through the Fashion Law Integration Project (FLIP), FLIAfrica has embedded a 12-module, 24-hour fashion law curriculum directly into the ND2 programme. Rather than an optional workshop or external seminar, fashion law is now part of what Yabatech fashion design students are taught as a matter of course. Every module is grounded in Nigerian law and African case studies covering intellectual property, contracts, employment law, consumer protection, social media and marketing law, export and trade, sustainability, and business compliance.
Bernice Ofunre Asein, Esq., founder and Executive Director, FLIAfrica, said, “Yabatech has trained generations of Nigeria’s most talented fashion designers. The fact that those designers will now graduate understanding how to protect their work, read a contract, and build a legally sound business is genuinely historic. This is what legal infrastructure for the fashion industry looks like not waiting for designers to get into trouble, but equipping them before they do.”
The course was developed by a team of seven contributors lawyers and fashion law practitioners from FLIAfrica’s network: Irinen Afen, Oluwatosin Jinadu, Oluwatosin Ajijola, Grace Efiong, Eleojo Unwuchola, Gift Osamudiamen, and Sandra Djoko-Moyo, founder of KYRIA & Co. Legal Intelligence, Cameroon. FLIAfrica is now in active discussions with additional fashion and design institutions across Nigeria and the continent to replicate the FLIP model. Institutions interested in embedding fashion law into their programmes are invited to contact FLIAfrica at [email protected].
