Whose Taste Is It Anyway? The Cultural Renaissance of the African Home
In the 2009 published book Yoruba Proverbs and Philosophy, author and traditional leader Chief F.I. Sotunde coined the term “westernosomiasis,” a condition he believed was draining African youth of cultural pride, treating their heritage with indifference while embracing anything Western. He wrote about what was at stake for future generations and the significance of returning […]
Architecture as an Atlas of Resonance
It begins in memory: the filtered light of a courtyard, the coolness of a shaded passage, the threshold between public and private. It begins, too, in the physical intelligence of making: the hand drawing a line, shaping a model, testing a material, and turning an intuition into something tangible. Born in Fez, Morocco, the French-Moroccan […]
North African Design and Its Geographies
Above: ALTIN, Our AlUla Trilogy, Wadi. Photograph © Lorenzo Arrigoni The Institut du monde arabe has named twenty-six finalists for the fourth edition of its Design Award, across four juried categories, showing at the IMA from 10 to 20 September with the ceremony held the evening before. A Public Prize, new this year, runs across […]
Francis Kéré Builds the Goethe-Institut Dakar from the Ground Up
In Dakar, a new cultural landmark is rising from the soil. Designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, the new Goethe-Institut Senegal turns earth, memory, and craftsmanship toward a new era of African architectural possibility. In Dakar’s Fann neighbourhood, a baobab tree stands at the centre of a building that appears to have grown […]
At MoMA, a New Exhibition Celebrates West Africa’s Modernist Architectural Legacy
In 1960, 17 African countries gained independence in what became known as the “Year of Africa.” For many of these newly sovereign nations, political freedom was only the beginning. They were confronted with what an independent African nation actually looked like, a question that stretched beyond governance and infrastructure into the continent’s creative life: art, […]
Inside the Most Compelling African Pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale
For a long time, Africa’s presence at the Venice Biennale has felt slightly out of place. Even as African artists helped shape contemporary art globally, the continent itself often seemed pushed to the margins, present but not always fully seen, its stories and forms framed through a Western lens or treated as something separate from […]
Huguette Tchiapi’s Debut Begins in Yaoundé
Huguette Tchiapi is continuing an existing convergence, building a fashion brand that brings together the intricacies of her Cameroonian roots and the influence of her British identity. Like most emerging designers, she is deliberate about where her ideas come from. She speaks about influence less as something simply absorbed and more as something that can […]
Architecture Learns to Play
A tennis court is already a diagram, with its rectangle and net and service boxes laid out in white before anyone arrives, and Backyard Community Club, the new tennis facility that DeRoche Projects has just completed in the dense Accra neighbourhood of Osu, takes that familiar diagram and complicates it in ways that turn out […]
Africa’s Largest World Cup, Mostly Watched From Home
Ghanaian fans in the stands at AFCON 2023. Photography by Nana Asomani. The visa regime that will keep most African fans out of the stadiums of the 2026 World Cup is the same one that keeps African artists out of biennials, designers out of Paris fashion weeks, and scholars out of the conferences where their […]
If This. Then That: Shoes — Lemaire → Kkerelé
If you understand why the Lemaire slipper sells out every season, you already understand what Tina Akerele is doing in Lagos. IF YOU LIKE LEMAIRE The Piped Crepe Slipper is the most iconic shoe in the Lemaire wardrobe. Two pieces of grained cow leather sewn together at the front and sealed with leather piping. Elongated […]