Ethiopian Ankelba An Attempt to Modernize the Cultural Leather Artifact

Abstract

Ethiopia has many cultural artifacts made of traditionally processed leathers. Ankelba is one of them and utilized in most part of Ethiopia to carry baby. Here, we report salient features of ankelba and its value in Ethiopia region, demerits of the product and strategies to enhance the design feature of cultural ankelba while maintaining its cultural value. Data were collected through interview guided questionaries’ to analyze the causes for the reduced usage of the product. We identified that the traditionally processed cow leathers are heavy with poor color fastness. Further, we recognized that cultural ankelba has flawed design features such as fixed size, improperly placed zagols (sea shell) and uncomfortable strap construction to hold the baby. Here, we present an efficiently designed ankelba overcoming the key deficiencies while preserving the cultural value of local people. This study would pave way for restoration of several cultural artifacts available across the globe.