Africas Stunted Urban Renaissance Urban Renaissance

Africa’s Stunted Urban Renaissance
In the last fifteen to twenty years, the urban landscape of Africa’s major
cities has changed tremendously, riding on the back of her newfound
economic prosperity and political stability. African nations are today
embarking on massive urban development projects across the continent. City
landscapes, which were hitherto littered with only colonial and post-colonial
architecture, are now giving way to ritzy contemporary skylines across the
continent’s capitals and major cities. With her newfound affluence, Africa is
at present funding ‘purpose-built’ mega-cities that take after similar
developments around the world; and African governments and developers
are now flying-in ‘Starchitects’ from all corners of the globe to redesign the
entire master plans of their major cities and also create brand new ones.
These brand new cities are mostly springing up from the ashes of yesterday’s
slums and shanties, scattered all over the continent. Today, no African nation
is left out of the skyscraper race; from Kigali to Luanda, Takoradi to
Kinshasa, the story is the same. The continent has become one massive
construction site where spanking-new upscale neighbourhoods and cities are
daily been designed and built from scratch, while old ones are being
rejuvenated.
One such brand new mega-city in Africa is Nigeria’s Eko Atlantic City. It
sprouts from a reclaimed ten-square-kilometre strip of land on the Lagos

Atlantic coast in southwest Nigeria. The city, which by all means is a twentyfirst century city, is being provided with modern transportation, an efficient
waste management system and every amenity befitting a modern city that
will be home to at least four hundred thousand people. The Eko Atlantic city
is touted to become Nigeria’s new financial hub, comparable to Manhattan.
And in southern Africa, on the outskirts of Angola’s capital city, Luanda,
there sits a 3.5-billion dollar brand-new city, the Nova Cidade de Kilamba,
which is expected to be called home by at least five hundred thousand
residents. The new city has seven hundred and fifty blocks of eight-storey
buildings, dozens of schools and about a hundred retail stores. In east Africa,
Kenya also has broken ground to commence construction of her new 14.3billion dollar IT business hub, the Konza Technology City, nicknamed ‘Africa’s
Silicon Savannah’. This new mega-city is about sixty-five kilometres south of
Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The city is expected to be called home by about two
hundred thousand people who will be living and working there.
Presently, no region in Africa is left out of these massive urban
development projects, and at the moment there are at least a dozen of these
projects in different stages of development; all over Africa, men and
machines are toiling day and night, building the ‘new Africa’. These are
indeed great times for Africa, a continent that had long suffered under the
weight of perennial economic instability, political strife and the attendant bad
press. Things are eventually looking up and Africa has no doubt found her

rhythm. According to recent International Monetary Fund forecasts for April
2013, the economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa should outpace the global
average over the next couple of years (2013 and 2014), growing by 5.6 per
cent and 6.1 per cent respectively over this period (IMF, 2013). Interestingly,
this economic growth won’t be slowing down any time soon, considering that
most countries in Africa are currently working hard at diversifying their
economies and opening up multiple streams of income to boost their
economies.

Africa’s prevailing economic growth, even in the face of negatively
changing fortunes in other regions of the world, isn’t a happenstance. It is
one that is fuelled by higher commodity prices and backed by multi-sectoral
reforms and the prevailing relative political stability across the continent. It
is this growth that has naturally given birth to the massive development of
infrastructure and the large-scale urban development projects across her
major cities. Africa, with her newfound wealth, has adopted an urban
development model similar to modern-day China and the United Arab
Emirates. She is today designing brand-new master plans for her cities and
aggressively building new ones from scratch, with the accompanying modern
urban infrastructures like roads, electricity and sewage treatment systems.

The skylines of her major cities are beginning to look at least a little like her
opposite numbers in the West, and of course in the East. And just like magic,
whichever slum Africa waves her wand at instantly becomes a new, upscale
district, complete with befitting amenities. In the new Africa, shanties could
be turned into swish neighbourhoods, complete with five-star hotels and
shopping malls, in as little as two years.
Regrettably, as Africa basks in the euphoria of her new urban utopias, she
has failed to notice the slow but imminent crisis brewing underneath:
unbeknownst to her, she has adopted a relatively unsustainable urban
development model, one which comes with two very fundamental flaws, one
socioeconomic and one sociocultural. It is a development model that is
complemented neither by the social advancement of the larger African
population nor by the natural evolution and growth of her indigenous
architecture style. It is, indeed, an urban development model that has left
behind a very substantial proportion of Africa’s larger populace.
The socio-economic implication of this growth model is that Africa’s
current urban growth pattern follows only one track and is headed only in a
single direction. This is because she has focused exclusively on those at the
very top of her social pyramid, at the expense of those at its lowest rung.
While Africa is excelling at the whole-scale ‘importation’ of brand-new

contemporary cities, she is failing terribly at elevating the living standards
and comfort of her low-income-earning communities, as well as the original
inhabitants of all the slums and shanties that are being transformed into
world-class cities. The continent has been unable to balance the level of
growth and development in her urban centres with a corresponding level of
growth in her small towns, sub-urban areas and the low-income-earning
communities. And as these urban make-overs are occurring around the
continent, no one has yet asked about the fate of the millions of original
inhabitants of the shanties and slums from which these new cities are
sprouting. The thinking in some quarters is that this group of people will one
day be naturally absorbed into these new urban settlements; this line of
reasoning is not only lacking in logic but is also insensitive, because these
people are in a class far removed from that of the new inhabitants of the land
on which their old homes once stood, hence they will never be able to afford
these settlements. The direct consequence of this is that this set of people
will always find ways of setting up new slums within the same city, even if
only for a brief moment before they are sent packing again.
It is no doubt evident that Africa’s new urban development pattern is one
that has been wholly modelled after those of modern cities in China and the
United Arab Emirates. But, while these urbanisation models seemed to have

worked elsewhere, they probably won’t work in Africa. This is because,
despite her impressive economic growth rate, Africa still lacks the requisite
resources to sustain this type of development across the board on the

continent, especially when weighed against her ballooning human
population, which is growing at a very alarming pace. The UN Population
Division in its ‘World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision’ lists Africa as
one of the regions with the highest fertility levels in the world, and therefore
projects that Africa’s population will grow from the current 1.1 billion to at
least 2.4 billion by 2050 (UN DESA, 2013). Consequently, bearing in mind
these figures, it is impossible to ignore the underlying challenges that the
ballooning population growth poses to the continent.
Indeed, very few countries in the world today possess the capacity to
sustain the urban growth model Africa has adopted; in fact, by adopting this
model of urban development, Africa is leaving behind a huge percentage of
her overall population (conservatively at least sixty-five per cent), hence this
urban growth is superficial rather than natural. The danger of this one-sided
growth is that the continent could end up with swathes of ghost cities in the
coming years. This has already been speculated in a report by Louise
Redvers, in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian of the twenty-third of November,

2012, to have happened in Nova Cidad de Kilamba. The report claimed that
almost twelve months after the completion of the city, only two hundred of
the initial two thousand eight hundred flats that went on sale had been sold
(Redvers, 2012).
As much as it is still too early to share the pessimism of that Mail &
Guardian report, it is quite troubling that a similar pattern had already
played out in China, a country which had used a similar urban growth model.
China now has more than its fair share of ‘ghost’ cities: a situation where
some of her new, purpose-built cities have remained uninhabited long after
their completion. This is because the rural migrant Chinese workers, at
whom some of these developments were targeted, simply cannot afford to
pay for these buildings. But, unlike Africa, China can afford to have empty
cities because the new cities of Zhengzhou, Chenggong, Yujiapu, and the like
were also built on the premise of keeping the rapidly growing blue-collar
Chinese workforce busy. This, on its own merit, seems like a potent economic
strategy to provide a source of livelihood for a good percentage of the local
Chinese workforce. Even in the event that these cities remain empty for too
long, it is also well within the means and capabilities of the Chinese
government to underwrite the estimated two trillion dollars that have been
sunk into building these new cities. China could ultimately decide to convert

them to social housing projects to cater for her large local migrant
population. Although Africa, just like China, will have no shortage of people
to fill up her new cities, the problem is that only a tiny fraction of Africa’s
larger population could ever afford any of these properties. And no country in
Africa today has the resources to turn these projects into social housing
projects even if it wanted to.
The most potent insurance Africa could have ever take out on her new
mega-cities would be to carry along her larger population by integrating
them into her current urban renaissance, creating for them a development
that adequately takes note of their social peculiarities and all the realities of
their immediate circumstances. The import of this is that for every
skyscraper Africa builds for her ‘city people’, she must ensure a commensurate level of development for the people living in the outskirts of the city, and
the small towns as well. Africa, unlike most regions of the world, has never
tasted this type of economic growth before; hence it is unwise for her to
deploy all of her newfound wealth to fund a new urban utopia which benefits
less than thirty-five per cent of her total population. Hence it is important
that Africa learns to develop within the ambit of her resources, because if for

any reason her current capitalist experiment fails, it is the same people on
whose backs Africa’s wealth has been built that will suffer the most. She

must adopt a growth model that enthrones infrastructural development all
round, rather than one that creates a glaring disparity between the
infrastructures and amenities in large cities, the city outskirts and small
towns. Without a doubt, Africa also needs some of the skyscrapers, large
malls and posh districts that are being developed, but she must learn to
strike a balance. She should deploy twice as many resources to develop the
areas inhabited by her larger population as she is currently dedicating to the
few at the very top, because there is no wisdom in bulldozing slums without
providing alternatives, because these slum dwellers will simply create new
slums elsewhere and it will become an enduring pattern over time.
The second problem with Africa’s current urban development model is
sociocultural: these new urban projects are not only bereft of any form of
cultural responsiveness, but they have also failed to draw any form of
inspiration from their immediate environment, thereby failing to
accommodate the anthropological peculiarities of the wider African
population. By exclusively adopting an international architectural style,
Africa has altogether discarded her indigenous architectures and utterly
dashed any hopes for a revival of the same. Africans are known to be very
culturally sensitive people who hang on to every thread of their customs and
traditions; hence urbanisation must not be seen to have dispossessed them of

that which they hold dear. Rather, it should be able to integrate itself into the
culture of the people whose cause it seeks to advance. As a continent, Africa
has never laid claim to a homogenous indigenous style of architecture, but
rather her architectural styles are as varied as the numerous influences that
inspired them. For instance, the architectures in north Africa were influenced
by the Roman, Islamic and Arabian styles, and are typically characterised by
stone or earthen walls and flat roofs. This style of traditional African
architecture is most popular in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya,
but its influence also stretches across the Sahara Desert to Timbuktu, in
Mali, and to parts of northern Nigeria. The style of architecture found in the
rest of Sub-Saharan Africa was mainly influenced by early European
colonialists and Christian missionaries, whose buildings were characterised
by long, classroom-style houses with verandas, typically covered with hip
roofs of corrugated metal sheets. For the rest of the continent, situated in the
hinterland and cut off from coastal borders and direct foreign influences,
buildings were just basic primitive African architecture consisting of round
earthen huts, roofed with bamboo trusses and clad with dry thatch. Despite
their ostensible similarities, each of these traditional regional architectural
styles still has its own individual peculiarities, which differentiates it from the
others; this is seen either in the constituent materials or the geometry,

depending on the locality in which it is found.
Unlike the architecture of other civilisations, traditional African
architecture has stagnated for well over two centuries and is yet to evolve
beyond the crude earthen walls and thatched roofs. Africa has neither
improved on her building techniques nor added value to her local building
materials; her indigenous architecture is, indeed, almost as primitive now as
it was several decades ago, and it is no surprise that traditional African
architecture is today still associated with poverty and ruins. For that reason,
it has remained unappealing to home owners across the continent and could
invariably remain that way for a long time to come. This is because, rather
than evolve, this style of architecture has long been completely discarded,
even in small African towns and villages. Africa has failed to realise that

beyond the glitz of her glass and concrete architecture, there is a bona fide
need for her local people to still feel culturally connected to their immediate
architecture. Hence, it is important that they are not entirely dispossessed of
their cultural identity as a result of urban development; rather, there should
still be some measure of connection between the past and the present.
Despite its current crude and primitive nature, traditional African architecture has the capacity to serve as a springboard and source of inspiration
for a new variant of urbanisation in Africa. While it must be conceded that

traditional African architecture as it is today possesses physical, structural
and material limitations that could make it impossible to satisfy every project
brief, its exclusion altogether means it will probably never have the
opportunity to further evolve beyond its current state. The reality is that
Africa has no choice but to invest in the research and development of
traditional African architecture, not just for cultural reasons but most
importantly for its affordability. In fact, the affordability and ease of
construction of traditional African architecture has the potential to become
the best alternative to rapidly balance the enormous low-income housing
deficit. This is because low-income housing is a very important facet of any
urban development, as well as a non-negotiable social right; therefore, it is
important that African states deploy substantial resources to provide mass
social housing for their people, using indigenous architecture. This is a much
more effective alternative than leaving low-income housing entirely in the
hands of Shylock developers, who are currently populating the landscape
with sub-standard housing which is lacking in both cultural and structural
integrity and retails at outrageously exorbitant rates.
It is also important to note that, traditional African architecture possesses
an appreciable level of sustainability, and even under very stringent green
rating systems and with very little effort, it possesses the inherent capacity
to earn credits for regional materials, rapidly renewable materials and low
energy use. Long before the mantra of sustainable architecture ever saw the
light, Africa was already building with sustainable materials; not because she
had caught the ‘green bug’ then, but out of necessity, using only materials
gathered from her immediate surroundings. Yet, as the sustainability crusade
gradually picks up steam across the continent, it is ironic that the continent
is discarding one of the world’s most sustainable design precedents that has
ever been set.
Even in the midst of the existing discriminatory urban development pattern
across the continent, there is still a handful of worthy precedents that are
being set daily. Although they are few and far between, they give hope for the
rebirth of a neo- African architecture which combines influences from
traditional African architecture with contemporary design to create a new
style that is still related to the former. These projects, through their design,
have not only evolved from the existing indigenous architecture of their
localities, but they also employ local manpower, materials and technologies
to create their own brand of contemporary African architecture; they have
also, without doubt, clearly demonstrated how social housing should evolve.
These projects not only integrate those on the lowest rung of society into the
scheme of things, but they also leave intact the cultural identity of the local
people they seek to serve.

The Outliers
Chipata Hospice, Chipata, Zambia

EL Studio Netherlands, in partnership with BKVV Architects of the
Netherlands, was commissioned by the Dutch Chipata Foundation to design a
hospice in the city of Chipata, in the Eastern Province of Zambia. The
project, which according to its architects is being built entirely with labour
provided by the local community, using locally available materials, is a
rotunda building inspired by the traditional Zambian earthen huts and has
the capacity to host between twenty-four and forty-eight patients, with a total
carbon footprint smaller than that of the average European home. It aims to
provide a hospitable environment for terminally ill patients to stay in and
receive treatment. The rooms will all be connected by the circulation space: a
circular corridor which makes a ring around the central hut that serves as
the nurse’s station and dispensary. The multiple openings around the exterior
wall are designed to naturally cool and ventilate the entire structure, thereby
almost eliminating the need for mechanical ventilation. This type of
development can serve as a template for institutional buildings in local
African communities, not just because it is well within the ambit of Africa’s
resources, but also because it provides good living and working conditions
for those at the lowest end of the spectrum of the social pyramid; it
seamlessly integrates them into the social fabric of society, so they will then
be naturally inspired to become a part of it.

(Insert images here)

The New Rugo: A Traditional Burundian and Rwandan House

“We believe that planning has to respond to current needs, but also to
be relevant for a wealthier and more developed Africa. That’s why
affordable housing for the poorest has to be able to evolve as comfort
standards evolve. By merging the two typologies, the two structures, we
designed a new one, the New Rugo. The New Rugo is evolutive, allowing
changes as Burundian and Rwandan societies evolved. The New Rugo is
a typology, easily replicable, environmentally aware. With low cost
technologies and cultural appropriateness, we developed a system
empowering fragile communities in Burundi and in Rwanda.”
- George Periclès Creative Design Studio

The new Rugo is a housing project in Rwanda and Burundi, inspired wholly
by the traditional Rwandan and Burundian rural architecture, which
establishes a visible connection between this housing and the pristine
cultural values of the local Burundian and Rwandan people. It is the modern
reinvention of the old without losing any of its original cultural
responsiveness and connections. It highlights the importance of
incorporating local cultures into the design of settlements and a low-cost
housing solution that explores the status quo by adapting it to a new

contemporary setting.
(Insert images here)

The word Rugo comes from the name of the traditional Rwandan and Burundian
houses, typically built with thatched roofs and adobe walls. The building, which
was designed by George Periclès Creative Design Studio, is a multi-tenant
structure of linked hexagonal buildings with courtyards serving as communal
spaces, where tenants share amenities like water and play areas. This is,
reminiscent and, very typical of traditional rural African settings, where
socialising is an integral part of the native culture. The new Rugo is a
contemporary housing solution that creates development without tampering
with the traditional anthropology of the dwellers. In rural Africa, proximity to
kith and kin is a very important consideration when designing settlements;
hence these settlements are built closely together so they provide neighbours
with ample opportunity to socialise. This is because although communal living is
almost non-existent in Africa’s big cities and towns, it is still practiced in small
towns and villages because it is believed to help strengthen family and
communal bonds. In this kind of settlements, neighbours share utensils or
partake in communal cooking and engage in joint communal activities like
cooking and washing and share tales of the everyday happenings around them.
Of course, this isn’t the case in the big cities and urban centres, but for the
rural folks it is one bit of cherished culture that has remained until this day.

Re fe re n c e s
IMF. (2013). World Economic Outlook. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, Publication
Services.
Redvers, L. (2012, November 23). Angola’s trophy city a ‘ghost town’. Retrieved April 27, 2013, from
Mail & Guardian: http:// mg.co.za/article/2012-11-23-00-angolan-trophy-city-a-ghost-town
UN DESA. (2013). World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision,. New York: UN Department of
Economic and Social.