South Africa has led design in Africa for decades, but the recent pan-African DNA show in Johannesburg has shown that the rest of the continent is close behind. Thirty of Africa’s best designers participated in an expo that launched the new program Design Network Africa (DNA), a project of the Danish Center for Culture and Development. 

 

Walking into the exhibit I was struck by the power and individualism of each African designer. When I began interacting with the designers it was an altogether different experience. Each designer, though profoundly committed to their own work, was also keenly interested in the work and the business of their peers. They were looking for common interests and opportunities to collaborate.. 

 

A competitive design environment is usually highly charged with rivalry and egos, but here it turned out to be an environment of information sharing and support. 

 

Design as a medium does have attitude, or as seen in this show, many attitudes. Dramatic, flamboyant, regal, sublime, playful, meditative, earthy, poetic or muscular – it was all present. The one element that pulled the show together was the high respect for quality and the insistence on handmade. And since the hands that did the making are African hands the works resonated with a vitality for which this continent is known. 

   

Design is the driving force for commercialization. It is the key that opens the door to buyers across the globe, no matter where they are in the pricing hierarchy. No one knows this better than Trevyn McGowan, owner of Source SA, a South African design and marketing firm. McGowan, also the director for the DNA project, is well suited to lead this design network as she has access to and the respect of many of the world’s largest retail companies. During the DNA conference, held in conjunction with the exposition, many of the designers said that accessing markets is one of their major challenges.

 

That was, indeed, the primary impetus for AfricaNow! – the collaboration of producers and buyers co-founded by the USAID Trade Hub. Handcrafts industry stakeholders at many levels can gain through collaboration. But let’s be honest – collaboration is hard work, particularly across many countries, many cultures and many languages. The DNA expo and workshops, however, left me feeling very optimistic.

 

African designers and home décor producers face challenges that make a design network particularly useful. The high cost of transport – a problem that all face – is not going to be resolved by companies acting individually. Throughout the conference there was an active dialog on selling within the continent, both in one’s country and region and across regions. In addition, after just a few days, a number of designers from East, West and Southern Africa were discussing sourcing materials from each other, and sharing warehouse and exhibition spaces for local and international opportunities. 

 

During the entire event the concept of cross-pollination kept running through my mind.  In my early years, I had thought about doing anthropology, but felt that I wanted to be a part of, not an observer of, the dynamism of cultures. Cross pollination is exactly that, dynamic interaction that inspires authentic growth and change. 

 

Dynamic cultures and change generates employment, feeds families, and inspires educational growth. Forward thinking designers are entrepreneurial leaders, bringing markets back home, taking products to the world and providing the inspiration for ongoing development and providing the inspiration for ongoing change and development.

 

DNA is a welcome new initiative in the handcrafts industry because of the inherent value of designers working together, sharing ideas, finding solutions to common constraints. I’m excited to participate in and promote its agenda – one that AfricaNow! fully shares.