Africa fades in and out of the limelight pretty regularly. Reporters report on the awful deaths and killings in the Middle East but reports on the thousands dying from AIDs, war and famine every week are fading and distant. Africa is a thorn in the western worlds side, a technicality that is only of importance because it’s so big on the map; it’s hard to miss. I may be getting cynical but it’s hard to be optimistic when not even the media, who seem to be constantly obsessed with morbid tragedy and death, won’t even go near it. As designers we are constantly debating what we can bring to Africa in terms of design and teaching. How do we educate and improve the lives of millions of people who’s culture and history is so different from our own? It’s becoming more and more obvious that we can’t just turn up and implement a wonderfully expensive and advanced new design solution, only for it to spectacularly fail because we haven’t taken into account who we are designing for. It’s time for us to look up from our sketch pads and brainstorms and ask; What can WE learn from Africa?
Having been born in South Africa, I’ve had my fair share of exposure to the contrast that is Africa. I may only have lived there for the first few years of my life, but each year me and my family would go back in the summer to visit family and friends. Each year I returned, I was experiencing a slightly different country that what I had remembered the last time I was there. You would say it was obviously that I was growing up, my interests and ideals were changing, I was seeing things I hadn’t seen before and as much as that is true, it is also true that the country was, and still is, going through enormous change. The one thing that has always stayed the same is the living contrast that is Africa. The immense natural beauty is shadowed only by the dark social situation of many black Africans. Economic prosperity for many South Africans is shadowed by high crime and desperation. Of course South Africa has been lucky to be have been touched by strong economic growth and relative stability, but the rest of Africa and especially Central Africa have serious problems with their people simply fighting to survive.
The above image is a water tank made out of an old Bouy. Perfect example of looking at something in a different way. Thanks to AfriGadget for the example.
As designers in the Western world we design to solve problems. The growing craft and do-it-yourself movement has embraced the culture of recycling to solve problems by using our extreme amounts of waste. We have such an abundance to waste that it’s only really a matter of time until we started using it to make something new. In Africa they hardly have the waste in the first place to even attempt this and a lot of the increasing Africa ingenuity seen around the continent can put our own craftsmanship to shame. We solve problems to better our lives in West. Increasing we use it to express ourselves and our ideas. Africa has an altogether different drive to solve their problems than ourselves and that drive is survival. We take the comfortable, elegant and expensive solutions to many basic human needs for granted. I have a boiler therefore I have hot water and therefore have a multitude of different uses for hot water. African ingenuity is something born out of a mixture between a need to survive and a desire to excel and equal the West’s lifestyle. The same ingenuity is more apparent in arts and crafts of African countries which have traditionally about being resourceful. Wood carved animals and interpretations of Victorian era British explorers have given way to Coca Cola can models of motorbikes or large wire sculptures of cars and African mammals. They are essentially doing exactly what we are doing, turning an inexpensive piece of material into an expensive piece of material.
This old African worksman creates coffee machines by using burnt out shells to create the cylinder component used in the machine. Read more at BBC News.
So what can we learn from Africa in terms of design? The most important lesson to take away is that ultimately, design is for the people. The examples I have shown are all specifically aimed at helping and catering for a collection of people in a community or a family. It’s about helping to get things done in your society the faster the world seems to spin. We are all too quick to think about beauty and accessibility in design but why are we designing it in the first place? These are the things we should learn ourselves before we try to enforce them upon or design for developing nations.