Influences of Islam and Christianity

Early civilizations in the western Sudan region had strong trading links across the Sahara, and an Islamic presence was established south of the desert 1,000 years ago. In the 11th century Kumbi, the capital of the kingdom of Ghana (in present-day Mali), was described as having a dozen mosques. Subsequently the kingdoms of Mali and Songhai superseded ancient Ghana, with Timbuktu and Gao on the Niger River becoming major centres of learning and commerce. Excavations have revealed that these towns were large, prosperous, and well constructed. Muslim builders introduced a new type of dwelling reflecting their Arab and North African traditions: rectilinear in plan, flat-roofed, and often two stories or more in height, these dwellings were built of sun-dried mud brick or of mud and stone. By the 16th century this form had penetrated the Nigerian savanna with the establishment of the Hausa states. Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and Zaria today present an appearance probably comparable to that of earlier centuries, but the former cylindrical huts have been replaced by those of square plan, reflecting the changing size of families. New houses are built from tabali, or pear-shaped mud bricks; some house facades are richly ornamented with calligraphic or representational shapes and even such emblems of modernity as weapons, bicycles, and cars. The large palaces of the emirs are often richly decorated within, with spaces spanned by palm ribs.

Prominent in many western African towns are the mosques, which frequently display a formal conjunction between Islamic structure and indigenous conical ancestral pillars and shrines. The earliest surviving of these is probably the ziggurat at Gao (Mali), but more typical of the savanna form are the mosques, bristling with wood reinforcement, of Agadez (Niger) and Mopti (Mali) and the great mosque of Djenné (Mali), which was greatly restored under the French administration.

On the east coast of Africa, Islamic influence began with the establishment of the dhow trade, which, relying on the trade winds, linked East Africa with the Arabian and Persian Gulf ports and with India. Kilwa, an island port that flourished between the 12th and 15th centuries, was built largely of stone, as were Zanzibar (where the mosque at Kizimkazi has a 12th-century inscription), Dar es Salaam, Malindi, Mombasa, and other ports and city-states built by Swahili- and Arabic-speaking traders along the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast. With the coming of the Portuguese at the close of the 15th century, the east-coast towns were plundered and burned. Only the northerly island port of Lamu, Kenya, retains the character of the Swahili town. Built of coral ragstone, roofed with mangrove poles, and covered with rag and lime mortar, the houses have fine plasterwork, decorative rows of niches, and deeply carved doors.

Until the late 19th century, Christian influence on African architecture was minimal, with the exception of the remarkable rock churches of Lalībela, Ethiopia. Following the Islamization of Egypt, the Ethiopian church was isolated for many centuries, but, during the reign of the ascetic Zagwe king Lalībela in the 13th century, 11 churches were carved out of the red tufa, including the cruciform church of St. George excavated out of bedrock. Some of the churches, among them St. Mary and St. Mercurius, were richly painted with biblical murals. Throughout the Tigray region of Ethiopia, there are many other rock-carved and cave churches, such as those at Cherkos, Wik’ro, Abraha Azba, and the great mountain monastery at Debre Damo. In the 17th and 18th centuries, more Christian churches were erected, some with splendid interior painting, such as Debre Berhan Selassie in Gonder, Ethiopia.

The 20th century

The subject of contemporary African architecture is as vast as the continent itself. Each African region and country has experienced colonization, nationalism, and modernity in a unique way, and generalizations about the continent would have to be so broad as to be virtually meaningless. Nevertheless, an examination of selected colonial influences and national architectural identities reveals much about the diversity and plurality of postcolonial Africa.

As has always been the case in Africa, contemporary architecture reveals the influence of a rich array of cultures. Colonial explorers and administrators brought European architectural forms to the coasts and urban areas of Africa, a phenomenon that is echoed in both nationalist architecture and urban planning. The Portuguese, for example, brought medieval European fortress architecture to Africa, primarily along the western and southwestern coastal regions. Characteristic features of Portuguese colonial architecture—primarily manifested in coastal forts and castles—include high towers, thick masonry walls with gun turrets, large storage spaces and dungeons for slaves, and living quarters sited within defensive walls. Many of the European forts and castles in Africa are located along the coast of Ghana because of the large quantities of gold exported there.

The influence of the British on coastal architecture in Africa was also significant. The architectural historian Nnamdi Elleh argued that

[e]xcept for the mansions designed for the governors of their colonial provinces and the administrative buildings, the English were obsessed with recreating their country villages abroad. Hence, they stipulated rigid cardinal rules for the surroundings and layout of houses of their colonial administrators.

Strict segregation of Africans from colonial administrators and their families also characterized British architectural plans.

Commercial ambitions motivated the French to establish a presence in a number of regions. In Fès, Casablanca, Dakar, Cairo, and Abidjan, the home environment of France was re-created in urban architecture. This shows itself, for example, in the broad Parisian-style boulevards and their diagonal intersections that can be seen in many African urban centres.

The influence of the Dutch is most pronounced in the Cape Coast of South Africa, where Victorian-style structures accompanied Dutch traders and immigrants. German architectural influence is evident in Cameroon, Togo, Namibia, and Tanzania. The colonial administration building in Cameroon, for example, has a foundation of volcanic rock and walls of masonry brick with iron girders. Many houses built in Cameroon at the turn of the century employed the Cameroonian practice of mounting buildings on stilts.

Repatriated Africans, released after the abolition of the slave trade, also had an influence. Freetown in Sierra Leone and Monrovia in Liberia were major centres of resettlement, as were the coastal cities of Lagos, Ibadan, Abidjan, Banjul, and Dakar. Repatriated Yoruba in Nigeria built mosques and dwellings that employed the architectural vocabulary of Portuguese Baroque colonial churches and administrative buildings in Brazil. The influence of Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Jamaica, and the United States is particularly evident in wood-framed Victorian-style houses, often with shuttered windows and verandas, and in the buildings of Fourah Bay, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

With independence came the need for an architectural infrastructure and an architecture that expressed national identities. The influence of the International Style—advanced by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—is evident in urban plans and structures commissioned from Europe, Canada, and the United States. The city of Dodoma, for example, was established as a response to the colonial character of the former capital of Dar es Salaam, and its plan, executed by the Canadian architect James Rossant, reveals the influence of the International Style. The influence of Modernism is evident in the capital cities of Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Lilongwe (Malawi), Maputo (Mozambique), Lusaka (Zambia), Dakar (Senegal), Accra (Ghana), Lomé (Togo), Abuja (Nigeria)—indeed, in many of the urban centres of Africa.

South African architecture was influenced by European design perhaps more than the architecture of any other African nation. The South African policy of apartheid led the Boer and English communities in Pretoria, for example, to exclude the majority of South African citizens from architectural schemes and to construct Edwardian and Neoclassical structures merged with the influences of Modernism. Cape Town, the oldest European town in the Republic of South Africa, contains a fortified castle constructed by the Portuguese in 1666. The Cecil Rhodes memorial, designed to evoke images of the Greco-Roman past, contains self-conscious architectural references to the Avenue of the Sphinxes and the Luxor Temple in Egypt and to the Avenue of the Rams in the Temple of Amon at Karnak. Ironically, this monument to pure Egyptian heritage and civilization borrows from the peoples whose cultures were supposedly “civilized.”

Contemporary architecture in Cape Town is epitomized by high-rise buildings and low-cost housing complexes inspired by the International Style. In Durban, Victorian and Edwardian buildings were constructed in the 19th century, and at the turn of the century the city hall was constructed in an early Renaissance style and surrounded by Corinthian columns. Like Cape Town, Durban has since added high-rise apartment complexes, as well as Hindu temples. European-style development in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) is characterized by Victorian terrace architecture. Like Durban, Gqeberha has a Renaissance-style city hall; the highly ornate public library building was designed in the Flemish style by an English architect, and nearby is a statue of Queen Victoria. Johannesburg, originally a mining town, was also significantly influenced by the importation of European architecture, as evidenced by the Neoclassical city hall designed by Hawke and McKinlay of Cape Town and the shining multinational headquarters of IBM. Like all other metropolises in South Africa, Johannesburg is troubled by an architecture segregated by income and race, with black Africans notably concentrated in shantytowns.

The richly embellished homes of the Ndebele, Sotho, and Pedi, with their decorated lapa (courtyard) walls and facades and their ziggurat details, have a colourful vitality. Although these decorations are mistakenly often thought to represent “traditional” architecture, such adornment emerged after the resettlement of populations during the apartheid era. Elsewhere, notably in Maputo, in Mozambique, and in Johannesburg, owner-built houses and resettlement townships were erected, extended, or decorated, often with originality, with limited means and in restricted space.

The phenomenon of urbanization has had significant consequences for the African continent. Many regions of Africa are in the midst of a transition from rural to urban areas, and challenges associated with this transition—population growth, illiteracy, segregation, poverty, lack of sanitation, high unemployment, and the draining away from rural areas of agricultural labour, as well as a devastating imbalance in infrastructure—abound. While the history of outside influence on African architecture is centuries old, the impact of 20th-century Western architecture helped create previously unknown class distinctions, some flowing from the segregated quarters designed in the 19th century. As Elleh suggested, most African cities are composed of a new town area developed during or after the colonial period and sometimes including the central business district; European quarters reserved for Europeans only during the colonial era; an African immigrant quarter, found mainly in parts of Africa with strong Islamic influence, such as Kano and Zaria; and the indigenous African town, in which the chief lived before government or Europeans expanded the city. The deterioration of African immigrant quarters is noticeable and indicates an urgent need for invigorated urban planning.

It is important to note that the wholesale adoption of Western designs and materials also has proved in many cases inappropriate for African urban environments. Open house plans surrounding a courtyard, as well as traditional building materials such as earth and thatch, keep houses cool and well-ventilated, while the use of such materials as brick and aluminum roofing can make houses uninhabitable. The exorbitant cost of new capital construction has also challenged regional economies: the basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire, is estimated to have cost $500–900 million, and the King Hassan Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco, was completed in 1993 at a cost of $1 billion.

In many instances, however, Western and local (indigenous) architects have demonstrated remarkable facility in wedding Modernist architecture to local climates and needs. The Finnish architect Aarno Ruusuvuori carefully considered the environment and local climate as well as financial realities in designing commercial and private housing, notably a development centre and other buildings in and around Addis Ababa. In Uganda the architectural designs of Swiss architect Justus Dahinden at Namugongo National Shrine and Mityana Pilgrims’ Shrine, both in Uganda, artfully combined modern building materials and design elements with the spherical shape of indigenous architecture. St. Anne’s Basilica in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, employed the arched design elements of traditional homes from the region, with neo-Gothic clerestory windows, in a harmonious whole, while the architecture of Julian Elliott in Zambia—notably the Kasama Cathedral (1965)—beautifully synthesized traditional architectural forms with Western styles. The Bulawayo Pentecostal church in Zimbabwe also represented a successful melding of traditional architecture and Western design forms. The wholesale adoption of Western architecture too can be symbolically effective: the Arch of Independence in Accra, Ghana, built like an imperial Roman triumphal arch to celebrate the freedom of Ghanaians from British imperialism, represents a rich and ironic play of architectural and national histories.