What about exploring contextual strategies to build the Africa of tomorrow?

Africa faces a dual emergency: responding to rapid urbanization while building cities that are resilient, innovative, and sustainable. Today, the majority of our technologies, materials, and design methods come from the West. As a result, our cities often look like European copies, poorly adapted to our climate and lifestyles.
We are in an era where technological innovation is no longer a luxury, but a vital necessity for urban development. The real challenge here is not to reject technology, but to reinvent it based on our realities. And in this context, Africa does not need to imitate to be modern; it must innovate based on what it is, combining ancestral knowledge, local resources, and digital tools to build a rooted modernity.
Training a new generation of architects capable of designing and innovating with an environmental, social, cultural and technological awareness is imperative. Africa's future is not to be imported but to be revealed.
In Rwanda, the African Design Centre project is training a new generation of architects to design and build with local materials, while integrating modern monitoring and performance technologies
In Côte d’Ivoire, the Abidjan School of Architecture is committed to a sustainability approach and with this in mind officially launched the 2025-2026 academic year during its formal opening ceremony, under the theme: "Resilience, memory and future: Architecting African heritage". This conference was led by Mr. Francis SOSSAH, President of the Union of African Architects (AUA), who did not fail to invite students and professionals to reflect on the importance of preserving African architectural memory while building the future.

Indeed, long before the arrival of concrete and towers, the Ivorian lagoon peoples (Ébrié, Adioukrou, N'zima) had already designed a model of resilient housing: the house on stilts, open, ventilated, in permanent dialogue with nature. Its bamboo and raffia walls, its bush straw roofs, its floating foundations responded perfectly to humidity, wind and sun.

Tiagba, the lake village of Côte d’Ivoire (Source : le voyage du calao)

These architectures, born from an ecology of everyday life, are now being rediscovered by contemporary architects. They teach that before software and sustainability standards; resilience was first and foremost an art of living.

Nigerian architects, for their part, are exploring resilience from a more scientific perspective. A recent study (Alegbe & Mtaver, 2023) modeled the energy performance of buildings under different climate scenarios (RCP 4.5 and 8.5). The findings are clear: buildings inspired by the vernacular model (overhanging roofs, lightweight materials, controlled orientation) offer up to 40% energy savings compared to standard urban models.
In other words, ancestral wisdom competes with technology. And it is by reconciling it with modern tools that the African innovation of tomorrow is born.
Furthermore, startups in Côte d'Ivoire show us that innovation lies not only in screens or software, but also in materials and energy. These startups develop ecological compressed laterite bricks, recycle and transform plastic waste into sustainable products such as bricks, paving stones, furniture, and decorative objects.

 These technological innovations are rooted in the local reality : they are designed for the tropical climate, logistical constraints, and available resources. They embody this "contextual modernity", neither imported nor disconnected, where technology becomes the climate's ally, not its tormentor.

Compressed laterite bricks Source : OHEL international

Local architects, such as Remy Aznar and William Tailly, with projects like Villa Mondoukou and the Essoa Pavilion in Jacqueville, perfectly illustrate this approach. Their projects maximize local materials and integrate the environment to improve thermal comfort without overconsumption. This choice is fundamental: the use of local, bio-sourced, or locally sourced resources (stabilized earth, certified wood) reduces the carbon footprint associated with transportation and production, while promoting the circular economy.

Essoa Pavilion, by Aznar Tailly (Source : architizer)

Local materials, Villa Mondoukou, by Aznar Tailly

These principles are the foundation of resilient development across the continent. This approach has been successfully implemented by other leading figures in African architecture, such as Burkinabe Francis Kéré (Pritzker Prize winner), renowned for his mud-brick buildings. Adopting this eco-responsible architecture, in line with local bioclimatic and cultural specificities, is the key to building sustainable and resource-efficient cities, from West Africa to the Sahel.

Cultural Identity as a Driver of Architectural Creativity in Africa

The uniformity of our urban landscapes reflects the gradual abandonment of our culture in favor of Western models. Faced with this loss of identity, as future architects, we strive to find new emerging approaches to reconcile modernity and African identity in the way we design our cities and communities.

Culture is the memory of an entire people. 

~Cheick Anta Diop

Building the future doesn't mean erasing the past. On the contrary, it means rooting it in what is most true within us. Cultural identity isn't a burden: it's a strength.

Rediscovering our cultural identity means rediscovering our architectural creativity.

Great Mosque of Kong 

Architecture is a language: each courtyard, each opening, each material tells a story of a way of inhabiting the world. Doesn't copying foreign models betray our way of life? We must reinvent the city according to our lifestyles. Our architecture must reflect: houses that breathe, spaces open to the courtyard, materials that come from the earth, and technologies designed for our daily lives.

Rethinking our spaces according to our values means designing spaces that tell the story of the unity of a people. Restoring symbols, forms, and know-how means restoring social cohesion and shared pride. Our local techniques are not obsolete: they are sustainable, adapted to our climate, and convey their own unique aesthetic. Why look elsewhere for innovation when our traditions are full of ingenuity?

For this change, everyone shall be involved (artisans, women, young people, traditional leaders, town planners and architects) in order to co-create our living spaces through participatory approaches.

Bricks production in Niger (Source : Vincent van Zeijst, Neozone)

Reshaping the African city requires reshaping our imaginations: African architecture schools must be places of experimentation, rootedness, and transmission, where we learn to design with our local materials and our cultural identity.

Africa is not late, it is on the eve of a renaissance and we are the actors!

AUTHORS:

-        Aurore KACOU,

-        Peyana KONE (Master's 1),

-        Clovis THIOMBIANO (Bachelor's 3), and

-        Elona LAUBHOUET (Bachelor's 2)

All students from the Abidjan School of Architecture