The Guide to Responsible Travel in Africa

By Anouk Zijlma, About.com Guide

A simple way to be a responsible traveler in Africa, is to shop locally. Help the local economy by shopping in markets and stores around town. Buy your gifts from traders and artists directly. Get some clothes tailored locally. Enjoy bargaining for trinkets, it'll help your local language skills. Visiting a market or souq is one of the most enjoyable things you can do on vacation in Africa. Whether its immersing yourself in the medina of Fes in Morocco and buying a lamp, or getting sandals made at a Maasai market in Tanzania, you'll love the experience. If you are unsure of your bargaining skills, or find the hustle a bit over-bearing, most African capitals will have a government or privately sponsored arts and craft shop that sells crafts from all over the country at fixed prices. Just ask your operator, or hotel staff for directions.

Buy Direct from the Artists
If you really enjoy arts and crafts, try to include a visit to a village where crafts are made, and get to meet the artists themselves. There are many communities throughout the continent which specialize in their own unique crafts. For example in Zimbabwe, there's Tengenenge Village, inhabited by sculptors and their families, all dedicated to creating beautiful Shona sculpture.

Craft villages outside of Kumasi in Ghana offer visitors the chance to try their hand at Adinkra printing, pot making, Kente weaving, brass casting and bead-making. (See sample tour).

Take a Craft Tour
Whether you are an experienced artist or not, a craft tour will certainly get your creative juices flowing and they offer a truly authentic experience. There are lots of choices out there, examples of craft tours in Africa include:

• Weaving Tour in Morocco - Ingrid Wagner, a textile designer/maker, global traveler, and language teacher, offers small-group travel to Morocco. Participants learn how to weave, knot, and embroider in the Moroccan rug-making tradition; visit local dyeing and spinning workshops; and create their own pieces of work.

• Craft Tour of South Africa - Nancy Crow offers an arts and crafts tour in South Africa. The tours are designed to take visitors off the beaten path to discover the textiles, arts, and crafts of the regions; small groups of travelers meet local people in their homes and studios and visit colorful markets.

• Ashanti Craft and Community Tour - A tour of Ghana's crafting communities, a chance to find out how kente cloth is made, pottery, beads, markets and a little drumming to top it off.

Textile Tour of South Africa led by African Threads founder, Valerie Hearder. This two week tour takes in the best of KwaZulu-Natal's rich crafting heritage, and moves along the coast to end in Cape Town. The tours fill up quickly, and they are now accepting reservations for 2014.

Of course there are plenty of opportunities to try your hand at a little crafting, weaving or pottery without taking an official tour. You can: make your own drum in South Africa's Coffee Bay; try your hand at a little batik in Ziguinchor, Senegal; or spend a day crafting in Cape Town.

If this is all too hands on, you can always just appreciate the mastery of the leather workers at the Fes tannery, in Morocco, or the Cedi Bead factory in Ghana's Volta region.