About Us
About Us
UndaMeta was co-founded by Teresa Lubano and Dr. Odundo in 2022, grounded in a shared belief in the power of African design and creative enterprise. Teresa has led the startup as founder since 2026, carrying its vision forward with deep personal commitment and purpose.
Beautiful illustrations and surface patterns have always fascinated Teresa. From an early age, she was drawn to drawing, design, textiles, nature, and all things creative. Over time, this grew into a deep love for motifs and visual storytelling, inspired by the cultural codes of her motherland, Africa.
Alongside this creative instinct, Teresa built a career in advertising, branding, and creative strategy. She learned how narratives are shaped, how demand is created, and how visibility determines whose work is valued. This experience would later become critical to her journey as a founder.
While studying for her Master’s degree in Design and preparing her thesis, Teresa asked important questions: Why were so many of the surface patterns shaping global fashion coming from the Global North? Why were African aesthetics so often appropriated, underrepresented—or entirely absent—from mainstream platforms, despite their depth and richness?
This became a turning point. Drawing on both creative instinct and commercial insight, she began transforming her nature-inspired sketches into original motifs and digital prints and set out to build a platform where African designers could create, license, and earn from their work—on their own terms.
In 2022, UndaMeta received a grant from the African Hub for Sustainable Economies—an important vote of confidence that brought the platform to life. From the onset, we applied Systems Thinking and Design Thinking principles to design and implement new business models at scale. As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation notes in A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future (2017), transforming the textile industry requires “jointly identifying barriers in the value chain and pulling the levers to overcome them.” We embraced this approach by integrating technologies that address these systemic challenges: print-on-demand and digital printing to eliminate overproduction, e-commerce to connect local fabric producers directly with customers, and collaboration with independent pattern designers to ensure they can monetize their creative work.
Local fashion designers had long expressed frustrations: mass-produced prints, cultural disconnection, lack of originality, and limited access to sustainable fabrics. They wanted textiles that felt personal, distinctive, consistently available, and responsibly produced. UndaMeta was created in response—honouring African visual heritage, strengthening creative ownership, and connecting design excellence with ethical production and market access.
Welcome to our website: made for fashion designers, African textile print wearers, innovators, and fashion aficionados—where you can buy and sell both printed textiles and patterns.
What Makes UndaMeta Unique and its Social Impact?
UndaMeta is a design-led, digitally enabled marketplace championing African surface pattern design. Our mission is twofold: to offer creatives the opportunity to express their talent and earn income, while enabling customers to purchase beautiful, authentic, high-end African-inspired designs and printed fabrics.
Our Print on Demand model furthers sustainability by producing only what’s sold, minimizing textile waste (SDG 12) and guaranteeing you receive exactly what you order. We promote circular fashion through digital pattern files that reduce unnecessary production, partnering with local mills using water- and energy-efficient processes to ensure environmental responsibility without compromising quality.
By connecting customers directly to independent creators, we eliminate middlemen, keep costs low, and provide designers with long-term earning opportunities. We source fabrics locally from natural fibers wherever possible. With 60+ African designers and over 400 unique prints, we strengthen visibility for African design globally, build a collaborative Pan-African supply chain, and offer authentic textiles to customers.
“You can tell a ripe corn by its look.” – African proverb
The African Renaissance is here, and the world can see it. It’s time to shine a spotlight on our rich cultural heritage and creativity through surface pattern design. Let’s “metameta,” shine! We hope this marketplace serves your needs as we grow together—contributing to the sustainability of both African culture and the environment.
Our Team
Teresa Lubano, Founder, UndaMeta
Teresa is the Founder at UndaMeta, leading design and e-commerce strategy. She is also the founding director at Nanjala Design and Shop Nanjala. With over 20 years in leading advertising agencies, she brings expertise in strategic creative leadership, design management, and sustainable innovation across physical and digital platforms.
In 2016, she was featured on Lionesses of Africa as one of the ‘Top 25 Influential Women Entrepreneurs Putting Kenya on the Global Business Map.’ She won first prize at the 2020 Ecommerce Story Pitch Contest by the International Trade Centre’s ecomConnect project and spearheaded UndaMeta’s 2024 Kuonyesha Art Fund grant win. In 2023, her ‘Edible Grow Kit for Kids’ won Silver at UNESCO’s Future Designer International Innovation Design Awards. A botanical illustrator at heart, Teresa is passionate about design and nature.
She holds a Master’s and Bachelor’s in Design from the University of Nairobi, a diploma in IMIS (UK), and completed the Babson College 2019 Launch and Grow Kenya Women Entrepreneurs fellowship program.
Akello Odundo, UI/UX Design Lead, UndaMeta
With a unique blend of technical and creative expertise, Akello brings a fresh perspective to UndaMeta. Holding an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering, Akello has a solid foundation in concept development, problem-solving and project management. This technical acumen is complemented by a Master of Arts in Design, which has honed her skills in aesthetics, user experience and innovative thinking.
As the UI/UX Design Lead Akello is responsible for overseeing and optimizing our digital infrastructure. This includes managing our e-commerce platform, ensuring seamless integration of our design and production systems, and enhancing our overall IT capabilities to support our growth and innovation.
Akello is passionate about leveraging technology to drive efficiency and creativity within the surface pattern industry. Her goal is to create a robust and user-friendly digital environment that empowers our team and delights our customers.
Outside of work, Akello enjoys exploring the intersection of technology and design. She stays updated with the latest trends in information systems through workshops and industry events.
Tessie Gachoka, Visual Communication Designer, UndaMeta
Tessie Gachoka is a visual communication designer with a broad, multidisciplinary practice that explores how visual language shapes meaning, experience, and cultural narratives. Her work spans graphic design, visual systems, pattern, and material-led experimentation, informed by research, observation, and process-driven thinking.
Rather than working within a single discipline, Tessie approaches design as an interconnected practice—where form, image, texture, and context work together to tell stories and communicate ideas. She is particularly interested in how visual systems can hold memory, movement, and identity, and how these systems translate across physical and digital environments.
At UndaMeta, Tessie contributes to visual exploration, concept development, and design-led research, supporting projects that sit at the intersection of culture, sustainability, and contemporary design practice. Her role reflects her interest in adaptable design thinking—where outcomes are shaped by curiosity, collaboration, and experimentation rather than fixed categories.
Tessie values design that is intentional, reflective, and responsive, and she continues to build a practice that allows for growth, diversity, and critical engagement with the world around her.
UndaMeta and Sustainability
UndaMeta is committed to sustainability as an ongoing journey. We apply in-house strategies and work closely with suppliers who follow sustainable practices throughout production, focusing on waste reduction, water consumption, ecological impact, product line efficiency, green marketing, and social equity. Through on-demand manufacturing, digital textile printing (DTP), reduced manufacturing waste, e-commerce, digital marketing, and supporting diversity and inclusion, we’re building a more responsible textile industry.
UndaMeta Limited is funded by the African Hub for Sustainable Creative Economies and University of Nairobi.
