Let’s start with some architecture this time: through the website African Architecture and Design, who, unfortunately, look like it’s a little late on the updates, I have found a couple of architectural studios based in Africa that seem to be worth a look.

The first one is Koffi & Diabaté, an Abidjan-based studio working at different scales, with aiming at designing high-quality modern buildings paying attention to the style and the cultural identity of their final users. A quick browse through their portfolio surely shows the existence of at least another African architecture, that is not the traditional greenwashed mud-brick houses that we would all like to see, and at the same time isn’t completely dependent of some old “Western” clichés. Indeed they look like they have taken their intent very seriously and this is clearly understandable from their work, a very happy new entry on my watch list.

The second one is MMA Architects, from South Africa to Germany, their offices free from the limitations of “style,” work to achieve  the creation of meaningful environments is intended to connect body mind and soul with the physical and cultural landscape. I particularly like their landscaping skills but that’s not nearly all, so…second  new entry it is.

Going back to news  here are the most interesting articles I found in the past week:

• How Twitter engineers outwitted Mubarak in one weekend – a really good article about managing information in our times.
• A great gallery about the protests from The Guardian.
• After recapping recent events in Egypt, he asked his guest, “Where, if at all, does al-Qaeda fit into this entire equation?” Bergen replied, slightly taken aback, “I would say not at all.” Read it here.
• “Rapid, communal self-expression” all tyrants and their Lady Macbeths are on notice.
• Mubarak: a leader on the brink is it the influence of mr. B, since he chose his way to defend himself from his accusers?
• And what about Tunisia? well…No one is really in charge.
• Baobab asks himself about what kind of innovation could really be next in Africa and..finds an app for it in his next post.
• Inequality, the new dynamic of history – it is all about corruption and political repression isn’t it?
• Party-Party? This reminds me of something…

* The dark continent is still dark is a quite famous post that appeared a  few years ago on the blog White African, an interesting read if you missed it.

This week has been a pretty busy one, both for me and for the world it seems. I would start by sharing with you a couple of interesting articles about this Tunisami that has hit North Africa in the last couple of weeks. So here we go with The Economist both on Egypt,  where the protests don’t seem likely to stop any soon, and Tunisia, with the magazine exploring the possible future scenarios for these countries. Here you can find some beautiful images about the protests in Cairo.

Sudan also seems to want a piece of the cake, or at least its students do, but the government puts on the optimistic face and reassure that any Tunisian-inspired uprising aimed at forcing President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to step down, amount to nothing. Just a little reminder about the situation in the days before the Tunisami hit Egypt, not that they weren’t warned.

While Northern Africa uprise, US call for  transition and France  warns the rest of the continent, Italian minister Frattini finally pronounces himself after being a little  distracted, doing his part trying to keep this government together through gossips and more scandals, but that’s just the Italian way isn’t it?

This  week I have also added a couple of links to my  list: African Digital Art is a  nice directory for design and art, through their website I have discovered this neat publication by the STT Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends and illustrated by Roquefort, that is surely going to be one of my reads in the very near future. If you’re also interested you can buy or download it (legally and in its integral version) from STT’s site. They also promote  events like this one, so thumbs up!

If you’re in NY this spring,  you  might consider attending this series of lectures called Sightlines: New Perspectives on African Architecture and Urbanism by the Institute of African Studies of the Columbia University, the first discussion featured the Senegalese artist Viye Diba – this is a short clip about his work:

The next one will be on Wednesday, March 23 and will be featuring Labelle Prussin discussing about Jewish influence on West African Architecture.

Talking about new perspectives for urbanism and landscape The Guardian has just released this new podcast about land grabbing, a subject that, in my opinion, is fundamental to understand properly what is happening in some Sub-Saharan Africa countries like Ethiopia (where land can be leased for as little as $1 an acre and land rights don’t represent much of a problem) but also Mali and Sudan.

Lately I’ve been messing around a lot with RSS feeds¹, since I have found them to be really useful for me to keep up with the huge quantity of information (wanted or not) I come across everyday. I do not have an Iphone or a mobile phone-network-connected Ipad and I am pretty happy this way, although this is the reason why I’m writing to you here and now, instead of twitting these news  one after the other as soon as I read through them during the week. I also find this  to be pretty useful, productively-wise, because even though twitting every single thought could be a funny – for me obviously – way to spend my time, the fact that I have to read back and look for what I actually really want to post has gotten me to think a little bit more carefully about what I’m saying and, more importantly, why I’m saying it.

But now let’s get back to business, I will start off talking about Africa and what’s  happening there lately. Ivory Coast and its troubled elections are one of the main topics of this late few weeks obviously and I have found this article by Nico Colombant on Voice of Africa to be pretty clear about what’s at stake for the country, but also what are the economic interests behind this very critical situation. All of the main news sources have written something on the subject, you can check out some of them like BBC, Reuters, or The Economist, wich tries to take a look at the bigger picture summing up some of the reasons why 2011 is going to be an important year for democracy in Africa and up to now it certainly has been. If you’re interested you may also consider taking a look at this, a report on democratisation in Africa since 2000 by the Economist Intelligence Unit stating:

Every year the electoral calendar in Sub-Saharan Africa becomes more crowded, and every year most posts, from the presidency to seats in the National Assembly and town mayorships, are competed for rather than seized or bestowed. The number of elections held annually in recent years has increased; since 2000 between 15 and 20 elections have been held each year. African democracy appears to have flourished and the holding of elections has become commonplace, but not all ballots pass the test of being “free and fair” and many have been charades held by regimes clinging on to power. Similarly, coups d’état have become more infrequent, although conflict, failed governments and human-rights abuses remain widespread. For every two steps forward over the past 20 years there has been at least one step back, but the overall trend appears to be in the right direction.

Unfortunately you have to be registered to read the full report, if you are not but you’re still interested you can do it here

In another article, Sié Simplice Hien from Reuters’ Africa News Blog remains on the subject talking about the prospects for the growth of Sub-Saharan Africa with this interesting article.

The Economist recently published an article about war’s victims and violence against women, with a very beautiful and very hard slideshow to accompany it. Very well done.

Changing subject, always on Voice of Africa, I have found this  article about the changes in the way aid is delivered and its implications, for me, I’m sticking with Dambisa, but still an interesting read.

More or less on the same line you can read about how six Harvard students  have been actively working and trying to improve things design-wise in Rwanda here.

Shifting to more trivial matters, we always  talk about dirty money in Africa and all, but what about when the money is literally dirty? Would a cleaner banknote increase your respect for your national economy? read more here.

And to conclude, Go Burkina! It’s Under 17 football team has just won the African Championship and I couldn’t be happier. The very first time I have ever stepped in a football stadium was in Ouagadougou and being Italian this actually makes me very proud. Good job boys!

¹If you are not familiar with RSS Feeds you can find out more here, as for the reader I use Google  Reader but there are plenty to choose from, so just try some until you find the one that suits you best.

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

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.