CleanAce, FPDA Push Professional Standards as Nigeria Marks National Dry Cleaning Day

CleanAce Foundation & Academy and the Fabricare Professionals & Drycleaners Association (FPDA) have urged governments, operators and training institutions to speed up the professionalisation of Africa’s laundry and dry-cleaning industry as National Dry Cleaning Day was marked on 3 March.

The annual observance highlights the technical and commercial value of garment care, from textile preservation and hospitality support to job creation and small business growth. The two organisations said the sector should no longer be treated as an informal trade, arguing that it now requires recognised training routes, measurable standards and modern operating systems.

Eniibukun Adebayo, founder of CleanAce Foundation & Academy and chairman of FPDA, said fabricare should be approached as a specialist discipline. He said professional dry cleaning combines stain chemistry, fabric engineering, process control, customer-service management and sustainability practices, and should be developed with the same seriousness given to other technical industries.

Adebayo said Africa has the opportunity to strengthen service quality and competitiveness if operators adopt structured methods and align with international practice. According to him, CleanAce Foundation & Academy has trained more than 1,000 entrepreneurs and technicians, while FPDA continues to work with operators to build common quality expectations across the industry.

Both groups said their current priorities include certification frameworks, apprenticeship pathways and youth-focused opportunities, with specific inclusion for women and persons with disabilities. They added that stronger technical capacity and clearer career pathways could help the sector absorb more workers and improve consistency for customers and institutional clients.

The organisations also called for wider use of environmentally responsible cleaning technologies as sustainability pressures increase across global commerce. They said policy recognition for the fabricare value chain is needed to support long-term growth and to protect garments as economic assets for households and businesses.

National Dry Cleaning Day, they said, should serve as more than a symbolic event. In their view, it should be used as a policy and industry mobilisation point to raise standards, improve training outcomes and position African operators for larger regional and international opportunities.

With more than two decades in the field, Adebayo is widely known in the African laundry, laundromat and dry-cleaning ecosystem for advising businesses, institutions and policymakers on operations, workforce development and industry expansion.