Key note speakers

Christian Benimana  (Rwanda) Director of the African Design Centre. Christian is currently leading the implementation of the African Design Center, a field-based apprenticeship that is set to be the BAUHAUS of Africa.  Prior to joining MASS, he worked with LongiLat Architecture and Research in Shanghai assisting with the Porsche Center in Shanghai and the Netherlands Pavilion in the 2010 International Expo. He is particularly interested in the innovative use of materials and technologies for sustainable designs.

Lesley Lokko (UK/Ghana) Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist. She has taught a numerous schools of architecture in the US (Iowa State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago); the UK (Bartlett School of Architecture, Kingston University, London Metropolitan University and the University of Greenwich), as well as South Africa, where she was Visiting African Scholar at the University of Cape Town.

Jean Charles Tall (Senegal) is President of the board of the Collège Universitaire d’Architecture de Dakar. He has taught at the Institut Supérieur des Arts of the University of Dakar and at the school of architecture of Lomé, Togo (EAMAU)

DK Osseo-Asare (Ghana/US) co-founder of DSGN AGNC, is an activist design think-tank, and is a principal of Low Design Office, an architecture studio that foregrounds low-cost, low-carbon building.

Susan Parnell (South Africa) Associate Professor in Geography, University of Cape Town, and has taught at University of the Witwatersrand and SOAS, London, and Oxford. She will confirm her participation this week,

Moderator

The conference will be moderated by Antoni Folkers, from the African Study Centre of Leiden and one of the original organizers of the African Perspectives conference.