The creative thinkers and problem solvers at the cutting edge of African design

A new book is celebrating the imaginative and ground-breaking creatives established in and emerging from Africa

(Gestalten)

The creatives working across the fields of design in Africa have long been helping to shake off tired stereotypes pressed on the continent by colonialism and racism. Now, a new book is celebrating the most exciting and imaginative of the bunch.

Africa Rising: Fashion, Design and Lifestyle from Africa, gives an overview of the work of newcomers and established names across design, fashion, photography, and architecture who borrow ideas from traditional cultures across the land-mass and weave them with contemporary influences, technology and theories.

Inspiring designers featured in the book include South Africa-born Athi-Patra Ruga’s playful colour-filled artworks (shown above) which span photography, textiles, printmaking and video.

Photographers include Phyllis Galembo, who documented the elaborate and ambiguous costumes of people in Nigeria, Benin and Burkina Faso.

Meanwhile, architects include Kunlé Adeyemi, who designed a floating school which collapsed earlier this year but was nevertheless a highly imaginative attempt at problem-solving in Nigeria’s largest city of Lagos.

“Design is such an important and growing industry in Africa,” writer and editor of the Design Indaba website, Katie de Klee, who contributed to the book, told The Independent.

“Designers in Africa are dealing with real needs, not just with desires for objects or aesthetic. They are problem solvers, and with so many of the fastest growing economies and such a young population, the race to solve those problems is really on.

“In often challenging and resource-scarce environments, design in the Africa continent requires a certain type of creative alchemy that it doesn’t elsewhere,” she adds.

Klee says there is plenty that throw-away consumer cultures can learn from those at the cutting edge in Africa, both designers starting out and those in the continent’s design canon.

Klee hopes that readers will gain an understanding of how diverse and contemporary African design is.

“I hope they realise that it is not just artefact and curio. That not only can it compete with global design, but also set trends and teach designers all around the world a few important lessons.”