Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Art

Making Africa takes a fresh look at African design. For the first time, we have a book that focuses on creative accomplishments on the continent, without being obsessed with the usual tropes of recycling, humanitarian design or traditional crafts. Instead, Making Africa shows a new generation of designers who use their work as a tool for economic, political and social change and therefore also to create a new future for the continent. Their creative output defies all definitions of genres - crossing over classical fields such as furniture design, product design and typography to encompass digital media, art, photography, architecture and film. A large section of the catalogue is dedicated to documenting work by over 120 protagonists of Africa’s new creative epoch - including Cyrus Kabiru, Cheick Diallo, Mario Macilau, Francis Kere, David Adjaye, Kunle Adeyemi, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Robin Rhode, Alaforu Sikoki, Selly Raby Kan and many more. The historical and theoretical background is explored in essays and discussions with Okwui Enwezor, Koyo Kouoh, Edgar Pieterse and Amelie Klein, among others. These are complemented by statements from around 70 other experts from Africa, who met at interviews and think tanks in cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, Dakar, Nairobi and Cairo. This is a book about the future of Africa and about a new, more open way of understanding design - which means it is also a book about what design can achieve in the 21st century.