AFRICA. NOW. West Africa

For the next instalment of Design Indaba’s Africa.Now. series our journalists investigate design and creativity in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.

The eye of the design world is on Africa. At Design Indaba, we work towards gaining a real sense of the scope and scale of innovation on the continent. In the many developing economies, much of growth is attributed to creative culture. Our AFRICA. NOW. series taps into the psyche of a creative community working towards a brighter future, one that not only creates for the purpose of aesthetic appeal, but that endeavours to find creative solutions to many of the continent's socio-economic deficits.  

Design is such an important and growing industry in Africa. In often challenging and resource-scarce environments, design on this continent requires a certain type of alchemy. There are so many lessons that the throw-away consumer cultures in the West could learn from the upcyclers, recyclers, and repurposers of Africa. 

In our first AFRICA. NOW. video series, a Design Indaba cameraman and journalist travelled to Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia on a research trip to find and meet some of these countries designers and creators. In this second series, our team travelled to Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. These videos showcase the untold stories of various new and upcoming African designers, discovered by our team during their expedition.