‘Architects need to create their own opportunities in real estate’

African Union of Architects (AUA) is a continental body of architects that draws membership from professional associations of member-nations. The union holds an annual competition for young architects with strong focus on made-in-Africa ideas, innovations and products. In this interview with journalists in Lagos, TOKUNBO OMISORE, the union’s president, spoke on the annual competition, the future of architecture in Africa, among other issues. CHUKA UROKO was there.

AUA competition

The competition will continue to focus on made-in-Africa ideas, innovations and products because the need to position made-in-Africa brands is now at the centre stage of the union’s initiatives. We will not lose track by just showcasing one competition and moving away from it. Basically, the idea is to promote innovative architecture which involves finding innovative solutions to our problems. It is to ensure that identified solutions are not only affordable, but sustainable, taking into consideration the culture of the people. The first competition did not get as many participants as expected. However, we do hope that the coming one, which will be in collaboration with the UN Habitat, will involve a lot of young architects and students of Architecture.

Building the future for young architects

We have also set up the African Young Architects (AYA) social media platform with the help of Nigerite. AYA has presence on Facebook and is set up to interact with students and young architects across Africa. The Facebook page also serves as a platform to discuss, review and share information among students and young architects in the African Diaspora. We are keen on this initiative at the union because they are the future and it is important that we improve our connections with them.

More than ever before, architects today need to create their own opportunities in real estate, because the days of waiting to be commissioned as an architect are over. Young and upcoming architects need to become aware of this reality. Across Africa today, we have the problem of foreign architects that are taking businesses away from us. This problem is getting bigger, especially in the Eurozone where unemployment is widespread. For instance, Spain has the largest unemployed youth and some of them are architects and engineers.

Unemployment of local architects

It will happen in Africa because if architects and engineers in other parts of the world are unemployed, their respective governments will focus more interest on Africa. China produces half a million architects each year from their schools. If you go by that statistics alone, it means that in the last 10 years, China would have trained five million architects, some of whom may be working in other fields. Again, if you look at Europe, Russia and America, they have millions of architects. Most of them nowadays look towards Africa for opportunities, because most economies on the continent are still developing and have great potential for architects and engineers.

Our leaders may want to employ their services because they have the appropriate technical know-how and experience. It might not be a problem now, but it is worth planning ahead for to ensure that we do not became second-rated professionals in Africa.

Consequently, it has become apparent that the training of African architects must encompass other disciplines such as Finance, Leadership, Marketing Strategies, Human Resources and Project Management. Practicing architecture the traditional way is no longer working and future architects must remain viable.

Training manpower for housing need

I just said that the training of architects needs to be enlarged. I believe, without any doubt in my mind, that this is a necessity. If we are looking at copying what obtains in the Western world, we may be heading for some sort of problems; something that may not be sustainable to us. Affordability and sustainability are key components in development. For instance, if you emulate a foreign housing development that has certain conditions relating to their culture such as entertainment and other ways of life that are different from what is obtainable here, you may find that such a development may later become a slum. To continue the encouragement of such developments is not only expensive but tends to represent a disservice to our culture. It would get to the point where generations after us will say, we had this culture and tradition but our forebears adopted other cultures and we lost it.

Footprints as AUA president

We became a lead partner to the UN Habitat in September last year. We signed an MOU as a lead partner. The chief executive of UN Habitat was featured in our electronic newsletter which was re-launched last month. We became a lead partner to change our cities and to improve the lives of our people. We have to work with the UN Habitat and other partners to ensure the best for our cities because it has been found that you cannot improve the lives of the people in isolation.

If you want to support poverty alleviation, we all have to work together – engineers, urban planners, politicians, architects and builders. We must collectively look at what is best for the people to ensure that we can also sustain it.

Job creation

If we do not create opportunities and devise means of protecting our jobs, then we have a big challenge. It means that our profession will perish. Many practitioners will leave the profession and become something else out of pressure. With unemployment, there is no architecture, because if there are no jobs, you cannot survive as an architect. We must be innovative and see the building industry as one so that it becomes a broader industry where we can all get involved and specialise in different areas that may be of interest to individuals.