India's premier design school, the National Institute of Design (NID) will soon undertake a project of training and empowering rural African craftswomen through design intervention in basketry-making (BM). "To begin with, by February end we shall send a team of designers from here to Zimbabwe to conduct a need assessment study. They shall find out the kind of eco-system, in which, the artisans are working there and what's the local market for it," NID Director Pradyumna Vyas told PTI. The NID team visiting Zimbabwe will identify 25 craftswomen there, who would later be trained in India here, in collaboration with the New Basket Workshop Foundation, an African NGO. "The programme to be conducted here for the craftswomen from Zimbabwe, shall be a trainers' training programme," Vyas said adding that they are expected to come here by this year end. This one million USD project, to be launched with the aid from the Union Ministry of Industry and Commerce, aims at empowering women through skill enhancement and appropriate marketing through leading Indian brands like Fabindia. The initiative will cover five African countries at a cost of USD one million over the next three years. "Design intervention in basketry craft for empowerment of women artisans from rural Africa will be undertaken through NID's outreach department, first in Zimbabwe, then Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia and Uganda," Vyas said.