Design and Culture

Design across Afrikan Regions: Decolonising Practices, Pluriversal Futures

What does it mean to design from, for, and within Afrika? In an era marked by the entangled dynamics of climate breakdown, systemic inequity, geopolitical volatility, and the enduring legacies of colonialism, this question demands urgent and sustained critical attention. This special section of Design and Culture proposes a focused examination of Afrikan Design — a term that signals a deliberate epistemological shift. As Ralitsa Diana Debrah articulates, the spelling "Afrikan" with a "k" reflects the orthography of most Indigenous Afrikan languages and represents "an inward-looking outward perspective of our continent," an act of taking "ownership of our future and our destiny" (Debrah, 2021). This special issue answers her call to tell "the Afrikan design story from 'the inside-out' as a way of decolonising design" (Debrah, 2021). It responds, too, to the late Okwui Enwezor's provocation that Afrika is not merely a site of consumption but a "place of production and creativity" capable of "making a new world" (Enwezor, in Kries & Klein, 2015).

While existing scholarship has addressed postcolonial design, development studies, and global South perspectives, there remains a need to explore how Afrikan-centred frameworks specifically reshape design practices, pedagogies, and discourses. This special section seeks to address this gap by bringing together rigorous, interdisciplinary research that asks: What epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies emerge across Afrikan design traditions, practices, and contexts?

How can we "move the centre" — as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1993) urged — to reposition Afrika from the margins of design discourse to its conceptual and methodological core? And how might this require examining whether the foundational categories of design theory — inherited largely from Euro-American intellectual traditions — distort or obscure the logics embedded in Afrikan languages, practices, and knowledge systems, as Wiredu's (2004) work on conceptual decolonisation argues?  How do Indigenous knowledge systems — spanning relational philosophies such as Ubuntu, cosmological frameworks such as Sankofa, Yorùbá orí and ifá, and Kemetic thought, and the situated material practices of textile, architectural, and ritual design across diverse Afrikan regions (Moalosi & Rapitsenyane, 2023; Wiredu, 2004) — offer alternative foundations for sustainable and just design practices?

In what ways can design serve as a vehicle for decolonisation, political resistance, and cultural reclamation in contexts shaped by colonial violence, apartheid, and systemic racism? And how might Afrikan design contribute to the broader project of pluriversality — imagining a world where many worlds fit (Escobar, 2018)?

As a leading forum for critical design scholarship, Design and Culture is the ideal venue for this investigation. We invite contributions that engage with the journal's core concerns: the intersection of design with political economy, social justice, material culture, history, and theory. We are particularly interested in work that pushes methodological boundaries and contributes to urgent debates within and beyond the discipline, aligning with the journal's commitment to fostering "rich and provocative conversations across power-differentiated communities, geographic distance, and disciplinary divides." We echo Achille Mbembe's (2015) call to "decolonize knowledge" not as a metaphor but as a substantive reorientation of what counts as theory, method, and legitimate inquiry — a reorientation that this special section seeks to enact across diverse Afrikan design traditions, practices, and contexts.

We welcome submissions (Research Articles, Statements of Pedagogy/Practice, Visual Essays and Reviews) from design scholars, cultural theorists, historians, practitioners, and activists. Following the rich scholarly discourse emerging from the continent, topics may include, but are not limited to:

1. Conceptual and philosophical decolonisation in applied design and theory - explorations of how design concepts, categories, and methods are being rethought from within diverse Afrikan philosophical traditions. This includes work engaging Ubuntu, Akan notions of communal personhood, Yorùbá ethical thought, and other regionally grounded philosophies; Wiredu's (2004) conceptual decolonisation as a framework for interrogating the inherited vocabularies of design theory; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's (1993) call to relocate the centre of intellectual production; design as a site of epistemic disobedience (Mignolo, 2011); Afrikan contributions to pluriversality and alternatives to universalist design paradigms (Escobar, 2018; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018); endogenously inspired conceptions of sustainability that challenge growth-based development models (Campbell & Rapitsenyane, 2023); and examinations of design's role in countering epistemological violence (Ofosu-Asare, 2024) and reclaiming narratives across Afrikan contexts.
2. Design practice, informality, and everyday infrastructures - engaging with Edgar Pieterse's (2015) argument that informality represents a generative site of urban creativity, agency, and alternative design practice; Angus Donald Campbell's (2017) concept of "lay design" as a framework for understanding design practices that operate outside formal professional structures; studies of traditional making practices, vernacular design, and Indigenous technologies as forms of sovereign knowledge; the role of design in preserving, reclaiming, and innovating upon cultural heritage; and how informal economies, settlements, and everyday making produce sophisticated design knowledge that challenges formalist paradigms across regionally and historically situated Afrikan contexts.
3. Pedagogy, research method, and institutional transformation - critiques of Eurocentric curricula in Afrikan design schools; the integration of Indigenous languages, symbols (such as Adinkra), and storytelling techniques into design pedagogy; culturally relevant and student-centred approaches that honour local oral histories, local technologies, and community practices (Ofosu-Asare, 2024, 2025; Adelabu & Campbell, 2020); methodological contributions including "storied-ethnography" (Debrah, 2021), participatory design, autoethnography, and other approaches that rethink method from Afrikan contexts, archives, oralities, and situated ethics; engaging the archive as a site of decolonial practice (Mbembe, 2015); and examinations of how design is taught, researched, and legitimised within and beyond Afrikan institutions.
4. Afrikan futures, ecologies, and worlds of relation - investigations of how Afrikan spiritual cosmologies, religious practices, and ethical systems inform design traditions, including work on ritual design, cosmological frameworks and making, and design within sacred or communal life (Debrah, 2021); Afrikan approaches to climate adaptation, biodiversity restoration, degrowth, and regenerative practices (Campbell & Rapitsenyane, 2023); more-than-human and multispecies design ethics rooted in Indigenous cosmologies; speculative and critical design practices that imagine alternative futures from within diverse Afrikan perspectives (Winchester, 2018); responsible digitalisation, epistemic justice in AI, and data management for socio-ecological goals; and visions for design that centre community empowerment, cultural preservation, and social impact (Ofosu-Asare, 2025).
5. Diaspora, mobility, and transnational Afrikan design worlds - explorations of Afrikan design practices in diasporic contexts; transnational design networks; the relationship between continental and Afrikan diaspora design production; design as a site of cultural memory and belonging (Berry et al., 2022); and gendered dimensions of Afrikan design practice and history, including intersectional analyses of power, care, reproductive labour, embodiment, and gendered infrastructures across continental and diasporic contexts.

References

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