The problem is how



How can a western architect work in Ouagadougou?
My very first thought is that it has to be very honest because, since there aren’t many regulations (in fact, as we’ve seen, there are very few), the architect’s responsibility has to rely exclusively on his rectitude.
The second thought concerns his expectations: the changes he will try to introduce will hardly scratch the surface  of Africa’s problems.
The third is that he has to be determined and confident, because it is the only way to achieve something, especially in Africa.

As we’ve seen in the past chapters, in Africa there is a potentially very attractive market, maybe not easy to reach, but it’s there, and when we talk about Africa One the market really doesn’t differ much from those that we are used to to business with in Europe. At the same time, in Africa Three there is a huge need for houses. This kind of market is something that we have never experienced, lately at least, as Westerners. I see the combination of these two markets as the possible key for success in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because the improvement of the living standards in these two social classes would most certainly help the thrive of Africa Two. In my opinion this is the fundamental step for any country’s success, as the creation of a middle class helps the stabilization of the whole society as Vijay Mahajan sustains. In fact actually Africa Two is struggling to find a place between the very rich and the very poor. We can easily think of many intitiatives to improve the conditions of Africa Three. In fact we, as Westerners, have built an incredibly efficient business upon that (from our point of view), as Dambisa Moyo outlines in her book, Dead Aid, “there is simply a pressure to lend. The World Bank […], the IMF […], other UN agencies, registered NGO’s, private charities and the army of government aid agencies taken together employ around 500,000 people”.¹

I don’t think these initiatives are completely useless, I tend to consider them more a waste of resources, being based on a system that has proved himself being inefficient, non-transparent, and very hard to eradicate, that gives some small results in very particular occasions. Huge resources, small results. I believe that we, as sincerely committed Westerners can do better than that, both with our money and with our skills.
Lately I tend to have very little faith in our globalized vision of our planet and the societies living in it.  I don’t think a globalized vision is necessarily wrong but I still do not completely trust it for two reasons: first, I don’t think that it can be applied to any context, and secondly, I think that sometimes it could distort the actual reality, and most of all, the actual value, of facts.
For example when we think globally, some huge marketing initiatives may seem to have a great impact on our whole world, while other local projects pass unnoticed. But in my opinion, not only this is wrong and simplistic, but most of the times it proves to be wrong.
We should stop acting top-down giving money to the governments since it hasn’t worked in the past and it is still not working now.

We should also quit acting horizontally on the lower classes since it hasn’t given the expected results as the projects often don’t consider any additional steps to their actions. Like a gardener who tries to irrigate the desert, he works very hard for one square meter of it and when he finishes the place is flowering and beautiful, but once he starts working on the next the previous one has already withered. I believe that we could make it rain acting as responsible (energy efficient and technological) architects when working for the wealthy Africa One, and as responsible human beings when we think of Africa Three. Working for Africa One will be very remunerative, and some clouds could appear if only a part of our resources were invested in activities such as:

• improving education;
• setting up small local offices in the slums to help Africa Three to build houses that don’t collapse every time it rains;
• hiring young local students and professionals in our offices;
• collaborating with the ministries for urban development;

This would differ from the gardener in the desert because it wouldn’t start and end with just one intitiative, it would spread to all of those who benefit of our work, because knowledge is easily passed on, and  it gets more useful and valuable every time, something that is not very likely to happen with cash.

¹ Moyo, Dambisa, Dead Aid, Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa, NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p.54

So What

African market, like any other developing market, is not for the faint of heart. It is for entrepreneurs and companies that recognize that where there are obstacles that might discourage the others, there are opportunities for those who can persevere.
Vijay Mahajan

With these words in mind I would like to start my journey.

Working as an architect in Sub-Saharan Africa would mean to basically forget everything that I’ve learned until now and start from scratch, because nothing there is the same. The technology available, the materials, the environment, and the very own form of the buildings are entirely different from what I am used to. The book Design Like You Give a Damn by Architecture for Humanity has been very inspiring and really opened my mind to the endless possible ways to help improving such extreme environments.
I would like to think of this experience as a consumer safari¹  (to spend a day with consumers in their homes to understand how they use their products), and as  a starting point for my future career. I would like to build myself a career around architecture for African people, whether it is Africa One, Two or Three, it doesn’t really matter because if, for example, I start designing homes for Africa One costumers, I can add some value to their product by making it more, let’s say, energy efficient, and then, with a part of  the money I earn, I could finance a small scholarship for local students or even train them in my studio!
The possibilities are endless, and I believe that “success comes from building businesses that strengthen communities (…) Businesses flourish when they address real human needs, and nowhere is this more true than in Africa, where the needs are often so great.”¹
I believe that the fate of a continent like Africa, whose “slums are growing at twice the speed of the continent’s exploding cities”2 is very tightly linked to ours, whether we like it or not, for other reasons than just economic ones: diseases and wars. As Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years says, new viruses thrive where there is strict contact between humans and animals, as we recently have witnessed with Bird Flu, this is a condition which mainly recurs in Third-World countries and, more specifically, in their slums.
As for wars “the Mogadishu debacle, when slum militias inflicted 60 percent casualties in elite Army Rangers, forced military theoreticians to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as MOUT: “Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain”³. “The future of warfare lies in the streets, sewers, highrise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world…Our recent military history is punctuated with city names – Tuzla, Mogadishu, Los Angeles, Beirut, Panama City, Hué, Saigon, Santo Domingo – but these encounters have been but a prologue, with the real drama still to come”³.
Now imagine that the growth predictions of African slums are that “by 2015 Black Africa will have 332 million slum-dwellers, a number that will continue to double every fifteen years” with cities like Lagos growing from 300,000 in 1950 to 13.5 million today in a context where “Third World countries now contain many examples of capital-intensive countryside and labor-intensive deindustrialized cities. “Overurbanization”, in other words, is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs”².
In conclusion, I believe that a responsible and context-conscious architecture together with an intelligent urban policy could really improve the living conditions of places like Ouagadougou, but there is one mistake that has been done continuously up till now now: the West should stop to treat these places as their poor stupid neighbors. “Many important African initiatives are playing a vital role in drawing attention to the plight of Africa’s most vulnerable populations. But an unfortunate byproduct of these campaigns is that they also reinforce a perception that Africa is nothing but a continent of war, disease, and begging bowls. This makes it easier to overlook the business opportunities that are also there, and growing”¹. I don’t even want to try to imagine what would happen if cities like the Cairo, Nairobi, Lagos, even Ouagadougou, were left on their own in the very next future. The next most probable bigger warfare is going to be urban slums, and this is a fact. Who can fight in a terrain of which there are no maps or infrastructures of any kind?
The worst illnesses come from the close life of huge populations and animals, and that’s another fact. We have already been scared by Bird Flu, Swine Flu, AIDS, and where did these sicknesses came from? How many more can we stand?
We are so close (literally) to the source (and I believe the solutions) of all these problems that we will surely be facing in the future if we don’t do something now, that I find it necessary for us to start as soon as possible. As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best is now.

¹ Mahajan, Vijay, Africa Rising, How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think, Upper Saddle River NJ, Wharton School Publishing, 2009. pp.19-20.
² UN Statistics quoted in John Vidal, Cities Are Now The Frontline Of Poverty, Guardian, 2 February 2005.
³ Davis, Mike, Planet of Slums, London-NY, Verso Books, 2006.

Photos

I’ve uploaded a few pictures of my trip on flickr, click on the picture or here to see what all the fuss is about!

Enjoy