Building the Registry · Part 1 of 3
In Agotime-Kpetoe, Cecilia Akpene Yevu weaves without her sight. A design she named after herself, Cecilia Yevu Kente, is now woven by other weavers too. For most of Kente’s history, a weaver like Cecilia would have left no written trace. Her cloth would travel, admired and copied, and her name would stay behind.
Today she has a permanent record in the Kente Registry, KR-W-2026-15049, in her own name. Records like hers are why the Registry exists. Last month, the work of keeping them took on a new and more lasting form.
From a project to an institution
On 13 September 2026, the Registry’s three founding members, Samuel Anum Adjei, Dr Senyo Kwaku Agbeblewu and I, met by video conference and unanimously adopted a constitution. The next day, 14 September, Kente Registry Limited was registered in Western Australia as a public company limited by guarantee, with Australian Company Number 702 314 967.
A company limited by guarantee has no shareholders and pays no dividends. Its members guarantee a small sum, in our case twenty dollars, should it ever be wound up, and any surplus it earns must go back into its purposes. It is the usual form for an Australian organisation that intends to serve the public rather than to make money for its owners.
For the Registry, the change matters for a simple reason. Until September, this work rested on one person. A register meant to keep weavers’ names “for all time” cannot depend on the energy or the lifetime of its founder. It needs a body that outlasts any one of us, with a board, members, rules and records. That body now exists.
What the Constitution protects
We wrote our commitments to weavers into the Constitution itself, so that no future board can quietly set them aside. It requires the company to:
- document Kente heritage as a steward, not an owner, and never claim ownership of traditional designs or motifs;
- seek a weaver’s free, prior and informed consent before documenting them, and honour any withdrawal of that consent;
- attribute every record to its weaver, community and tradition;
- never sell or transfer weavers’ personal information; and
- keep the Registry’s records open to the public, with permanent identifiers that are never reassigned, and never sell them or take them out of public access.
Membership is free. Alongside ordinary members, the Constitution creates a class of Weaver Members, for the weavers and weaving households whose work the Registry documents, with the same right to vote. Directors serve without payment. My own role as Founding Director carries no extra vote or veto, and the board must keep a written succession plan so that the Registry’s records, systems and relationships never depend on a single person. Within eighteen months, the company must also establish a Cultural Advisory Council that brings in weavers, weavers’ associations and traditional authorities from the communities we document.
The full text is published on this site: read the Constitution of Kente Registry Limited.
The founding record
On 15 September, the day after registration, I prepared a report for my fellow directors recording how the company was established: its registration details, its officeholders, the steps completed and the position of our application to become a charity. We have published a public edition of that report, updated this week to record what happened next. Read the Directors’ Report and Company Record (PDF).
I am grateful to Samuel and Senyo, who said yes to the hard and unglamorous work of governance before there was anything to show for it, and to the weavers and field officers in Ghana whose trust gives the Registry its purpose.
Becoming a company was the first step. A month later came news that changes how the Registry stands in public, and I will share it in the next part of this series.
Read Part 2: Kente Registry Limited Is Now a Registered Charity →
Phillip Nyakpo is the founder of Kente Registry and a Director of Kente Registry Limited.
