My African Aesthetic

Unwasted_African aesthetics and the global translation of African narratives with Prof. Mugendi Kanampiu M’Rithaa

• PRAKSIS Norway, Eunice Nanzala Schumacher, Henry Mainsah, Penina Acayo Laker, • Season 6 • Episode 4

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Professor Mugendi Kanampiu M’Rithaa is a pioneering transdisciplinary designer, educator, and President Emeritus of the World Design Organization. He is a thinker whose work spans continents, cultures, and causes-  a passionate advocate for design as a transformative force on the African continent and a believer in the idea of “Afrika with a K” — a linguistic and philosophical shift toward self-definition and narrative ownership.

In this interview, anchored in the project Unwasted by Holos Creative Studio Afrika LTD, Mugendi helps us unpack the effects of consumerism, post-consumer waste and colonial legacies on African beauty standards and forms of artistic expression. Unwasted reimagines discarded synthetic hair as a material of value but also sparks deeper reflections on African aesthetics, material culture, and self-definition. We reflect on how African women navigate inherited colonial beauty norms, the environmental burden of synthetic hair, and the loss of indigenous African art, design and architecture knowledge systems. 

Professor M’Rithaa calls for a reclamation of traditional African hair practices—ethically, aesthetically, and sustainably—illustrating how local and indigenous cultural practices interact with global consumer-driven beauty ideals. He takes us on a journey through African aesthetic traditions — from the symbolic meanings of hair and adornment, to the deep knowledge systems embedded in crafts, patterns and materials. Our dialogue moves beyond African hair aesthetics examining broader questions of community-based craft, circular economies, and how African artists, architects and creatives are shaping a vibrant, self-defined aesthetic. 

We are invited to rethink our materials, our methods, and our mindsets — in service of a more sustainable, culturally grounded, and creatively liberated future for African aesthetic and design philosophy.

Link to UNWASTED Documentary | Holos Creative Solutions (HCS_Afrika Ltd): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX2WWoguuz4 

Produced for PRAKSIS Presents/ https://www.praksisoslo.org/presents. 

Guest edited by My African Aesthetic under the theme: “African aesthetics- a diasporan perspective”

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Website: https://www.myafricanaesthetic.com/

Speaker 1:

As a design thinker educator and an advocate for socially responsive innovation, your work reflects a deep engagement with so many things, including African identity, sustainability and inclusive design. So in today's conversation we will be exploring one of your projects Unwasted, a springboard into questions of African aesthetics, material culture, beauty and the global translation of African narratives. Broadly speaking, but just to get us started, could you briefly introduce Unwasted?

Speaker 2:

specifically focusing on what inspired you to conduct this project. Yes, unwasted was actually inspired um a conversation I had with a gentleman who was working with uh, one of the leading um hair extension. Uh produced producers in uh. They're basically headquartered in india and they had opened up quite a big business in Africa, and so I was a bit more critical. My wife and I were a bit more critical and we said you know, the notion of beauty is everyone's choice. But we noted that the hair extensions that were discarded became a problem environmentally and also they affected little children and animals which ingested these extensions accidentally, because they're made of a synthetic material which obviously doesn't metabolize in our organic bodies, whether animals or people, not to mention that it's an ISO because it's just littered across the environment. So we kind of challenged this company that they needed to take responsibility for the end of life of their product. However, being designers, we thought maybe if there was a business model as an incentive for those who end up using the hair extensions, that might be a more sustainable option.

Speaker 2:

So because I'm teaching at Machakos and I'm aware that the people of Machakos are legendary in art and craft, generally speaking, they're very good carvers If you see any carvings in Kenya, at the Maasai markets, as they call them, they're typically carved by and I think Eunice would bear me out they're usually carved by the Kamba community. And, incidentally, the Kamba community and this might enrich your own study got these skills from the Makonde people of Tanzania, who in turn, got it from people from Mozambique and Angola. So there's a really beautiful Pan-African thread. As much as we're speaking of art and craft in Machakos, which is 70 kilometers southeast of Nairobi, but the thread weaves into other countries and regions Tanzania, mozambique and even Angola. So those traditional carving techniques came from those places and the camber are the best proponents of those styles. So that was the catalyst for the project, for the project, and so, again, because of my work in design for sustainability, I was aware that UNSDGs, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, that out of the 17 sustainable goals and 169 targets, there had to be something that referenced issues of sustainable you know, sustainable communities, as well as environmental stewardship and so on, and so we referenced those and you'll see them in the video. It's part of the foregrounding.

Speaker 2:

So what we thought was okay, this challenge that this hair extension company is dealing with is not unique to Kenya, indeed not unique to Africa. Wherever there's a huge demand for these products, there's definitely going to be a need for an intervention. So by adopting the UN SDGs as one of our lenses, we thought we could simultaneously contribute to a global solution, or at least in thinking, in principle, the solutions we came up with locally could be replicated elsewhere. So that's how, then the UN SDGs were roped in. And then further, if you read from the clippings, and also it's referenced in the video Kenya was one of the first African countries to ban single-use plastics. So then, therefore, we found a legal policy and almost a moral imperative that we could then lean on to say if kenya has already banned some of these things, then we can contribute to the aspirations of that policy by actually eliminating, or at least reducing to a significant extent, the use, or the misuse, to be more specific, of discarded hair extensions. So once we got into conversations with some of the local communities, a group of women they call themselves MUO women's group who do weaving, said us we do weaving. Why don't you give us the hair? We'll do some experimentation and see if it can be woven into anything useful. And so it was in the spirit of design thinking, which was one of the methodologies we use as a human-centered approach.

Speaker 2:

They actually came up with a number of iterations of woven baskets which actually worked. The only challenge was the aesthetic element, because it was the hair, I mean the hair extensions typically browns and blacks. So the end product also was limited in that sense in terms of the range of colors available. But, notwithstanding, they actually did prove that they could actually create even stronger these baskets, woven baskets. But then there was a limitation based on the length of the hair extension.

Speaker 2:

So what happened then is there was a couple of men, who were linked to a different group, that found the women doing the weaving and discarding the shorter strands, which they said were not suitable for weaving. And they said we make red clay bricks, the ones that are just made of adobe, and we'd like to see if, by introducing some of these fibers, the synthetic hair fibers, whether there would be any difference in the compressive strength of these bricks. So they actually did a couple of experimentations. They even fired those bricks and, lo and behold, they found that the bricks were actually stronger in terms of compression, which makes sense because if you speak to a civil or building engineer, they'll tell you that the fibers actually improve the compressive strength and also the tensile strength of the bricks. So that was basically the background CSR client. They were very happy, almost kind of sanitizing their conscience, that oh okay, we're not such bad guys after all, because if these extensions can be used for something that's useful.

Speaker 2:

So we took a step further and asked ourselves could a business model emerge out of this now that we've done some experimentation? And indeed we found that some of the women were able to sell those. We call these baskets, kiondos in Kenya, so if I use the word kiondo I'm talking of the woven basket and they were actually able to sell some. And the men were able to sell the bricks that they used, the hair extensions. So, to be quite honest, I haven't visited these groups for a while and I would like to do that now that you've revived interest in this project.

Speaker 2:

And so the business case was made that actually a whole industry, so to speak, of collectors, sorters, cleaners and ultimately, weavers and the users of the short strands for the clay bricks evolved out of this. So not only was the byproduct, the discarded hair, useful for product design in that sense, but actually it could create a sustainable business model. So that is now the dry part of the project. So I'm sure you have some much more interesting philosophical and aesthetic linked questions to ask. So unless I've left something out, please feel free to ask.

Speaker 1:

That was actually a really good overview of the project, sort of like from conceptual development all the way to final production, and I think there are so many broad but very exciting themes along the lines of sustainability, ethical transformation of materials, such as that, so we'll get a chance to tease out a few things such as that. So we'll get a chance to tease out a few things, but before we jump into that, just one last introductory question that I think would be helpful is to hear from you how are these themes of ethical transformation of materials, or narratives along the lines of sustainability, how do those impact your practice? Do you see those show up elsewhere in the work that you do?

Speaker 2:

And, if you don't mind, just briefly talking a little bit about that, yes, yes, they do, Because, having been a proponent for sustainable design and also socially conscious design, we've often found objects and so-called discarded materials could actually be the basis of upcycling or even second life. And I think I've mentioned in the past about the bark cloth which is found in Uganda. I'm sure, penina, you'd be excited to hear that that's a material that has great promise, and bark cloth, being a material, was one of the materials that actually inspired our project, because, again, barcloth because it's basically tan and brown colors also has a limited range aesthetically in terms of colors, but also has this wonderful fiber, almost like a leather made from wood bark, and yet, at the same time, creates employment because of the sustainable regeneration of the bark of these trees. So, yes, that was part of why it was a natural thing then for me to think of that. Then I want to. Now this is beautiful In Ghana.

Speaker 2:

I'm sure you all know of the adinkra symbol yes yes, and the adinkra symbol for beauty is actually a wooden comb uh. You can easily find this online and I think the name for that wooden comb, uh, which is the uh adinkra symbol for beauty, is dua afe. So that's d-u-a as the first word and the second word is a-f-e. And this symbol, actually uh, doesn't just relate to beauty, which is associated with women in this instance of that beautiful comb, because there's a beautiful eye, a stylized eye, in the middle of the handle of the comb. So it speaks also to cleanliness and not just beauty.

Speaker 2:

And I like some of this symbolism in Africa because one symbol could have multiple meanings. So the symbol for beauty happens also to be the symbol for cleanliness. This is not captured in the video, so I'm so happy you guys are asking me some of these questions because that was a different audience, so to speak. So the wooden comb, the dua afe adinkra symbol, for mugendi was the greatest inspiration because it was about women and the beauty that the hair extensions are meant to elicit, but also dua afe also means it is a symbol of beauty and cleanliness. So the environmental cleanliness bit actually was inspired by the fact that you can bring the two notions of environmental cleanliness with feminine beauty. So this is an interesting twist and I hope that might be of interest to you.

Speaker 3:

Just to follow up on what you have been talking about regarding the symbolism of the wooden comb, and I think that this is a very good example of what you have talked about in your previous work at least what I've read which is like underlining the importance of design, not just as in terms of making innovative products, but also design as storytelling like design as narrative.

Speaker 3:

So I think that's a very good illustration of that of designers using this to get people to embed meanings into these ideas about iconic products, but also about new products that you're developing.

Speaker 2:

Indeed, there's an artist from Kenya known as Cyrus Kabiru, and what I find most powerful about African art is that within it is encapsulated some really powerful stories. Secondly, so, the story is the first, which is a more literal interpretation, which elicits a conversation, but there's a second level, which is deep embedded symbolism. So Cyrus Kabiru's narrative and you can read his interviews is basically challenging people to take a new look at Africa, take a fresh look at Africa and take a fresh look, and then he offers you these metaphoric glasses through which you can look at Africa and appreciate the richness of the art and the stories that are emerging. Ben Okri, who all of you know very well, also speaks of three Africas. Right, he talked about the one they talk. Talk about which is those guys out there? Uh, then the, the one we see every day, and then he talks about this real magical africa that is emerging right before our very eyes, and it ties in beautifully to what, uh, cyrus kabiru is trying to do. Here is this magical africa that is emerging, and the magic is in the symbolism, if those of us who know anything about magic even though I don't practice anything close to that know that magic on its own is very mundane if it doesn't have embedded symbolism.

Speaker 2:

So Africa has this superficial level that people see, and typically those who visit Africa have a very Eurocentric perspective. So they miss a lot of the beauty of Africa because they see it literally. They see poverty or the low standard of living and they use that as the reference, or the so-called one or two dollars, you know datum line, where if you get less than that, they consider you poor and therefore you have nothing to teach or share. And then there are those then who engage with Africa a bit deeper, and that's a combination of us and them, and we start to see something that is every day, the energy of Africa, the music, the fashion, the culinary arts, the power of the continent that is emerging as we speak. And then there's this magical one, which you need to be a lot more attuned to subtle cues for you to be able to unlock. You almost need a lexicon of sorts, so, like when you see Cyrus Kabiru's work, you may just get entertained oh, these are interesting glasses, or whatever.

Speaker 2:

But if you understand what he's trying to communicate by saying take a fresh look at Africa through a different lens, it takes on a different meaning, view and African art since we're speaking of aesthetics has this amazing power of encapsulating stories and symbols in a way that much of Western art has lost. I believe at one time Western art had something similar, because I've seen some of the works, particularly in the William Morris days and prior, when there was a craft movement, and then now, with modernization and I'm a beneficiary of this industry, particularly industrial design we've removed ornament and in the process of removing ornament, we've removed rich symbolism and meaning which you still find in African aesthetics. I think we are extravagant in the use of symbol and I celebrate that extravagance because I think it's part of being human is going beyond the mundane, you know, finding meaning beyond the obvious.

Speaker 4:

You give us a lot of references that help us to expand our understanding of African aesthetics but also kind of understand the diaspora in a way. Help us understand also how African knowledge, african symbols and even names here and there you know Cyprus, kabiru, and you mentioned the comb, for example and I mean back to wasted, if we could zoom into a couple of the themes that wasted addresses. The first one which you mentioned was synthetic hair. It plays a big role in the economy, but it is also a source of environmental waste. Yet it's's tied to our beauty as African women, our identity and, specifically in this documentary, how African women define beauty for themselves versus how external forces such as colonial legacies and consumerism shape those definitions. So how do we, if you have any ideas I know this might be a bit difficult question to ask a gentleman, but I know that you're nuanced in this subject how do you think we can reclaim indigenous African hair practices as both aesthetic and sustainable?

Speaker 2:

Yes, actually I have an opinion on this matter, believe it or not. Ron Egglash is an ethno-mathematician and computer scientist from the US and when he was doing his master's and his PhD he came across something fascinating, which is the African fractals. And if you recall from fractal geometry, fractals are these self-replicating patterns that you find as you zoom in and out of systems and objects. You know, like if you zoom into a snowflake, you find it as other snowflakes, you know, fully formed, and so on and so forth. And he had no idea and he came in as one of those first examples of Ben Okri's, the one they talk about, the Africa they talk about, which is what they've heard from a distance. And through his studies he came to become a big advocate and actually you'd almost call him an apologist for african uh fractals. And one of the subcategories that he studied that really enriched his appreciation was uh hair braiding in the drc. And the hair braiding in the drc so that it brings it home uh, he found that there was uh patterns that women wove into their hairs and braided every day. But actually when you study them from a computing and ethnomathematician, you know like from a mathematics point of view, you find it's an incredibly complex system which replicates galaxies and star formations and many other things. I don't want to spoil that for you, but it's fascinating and you can tell I've been really advertising it since because I'm an ambassador for Africa. And if I might remind you of my favorite proverb from the continent, which is from Nigeria and it's quoted by Chinua Achebe, is that until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. So Ron Eglash equipped me in a sense, to say the things I've always wanted to say, but now borrowing a voice from outside so that there was no conflict of interest. I believe that African women have amazing hair, so let's start there.

Speaker 2:

Somewhere through the colonial exercise, we lost our sense of pride as Africans. In fact, I was talking to my mom the other day that there's a word they use in my language. I come from a community called the Meru, who are found at the foothills of Mount Kenya, and in my community there's a word they call Oshenshi, and I did some discussion with my mom and then I had this major epiphany as we were having the conversation, and I told her, actually that's not even a Meru word, it comes from the word nonsense. So it was. Can I say Merukan, or you know the way you anglicize words? So our local communities changed because they couldn't pronounce nonsense. They called it washenchi. So what they did in the process because the white man was the one using the word nonsense every time african students my mom was one of those first students who encountered white missionary teachers Is anything they did that touched on the traditional cultural element. They were told that is Oshenshi. It was nonsense. So they developed a word that they use now locally with their other peers and it became Oshenshi, which is actually nonsense.

Speaker 2:

So what has happened is we've lost our confidence over a period because of the initially the colonial exercise I can call it particularly neoliberal capitalism, where people needed to be faulted so that they might become more vulnerable to buying things. I don't know how to put it better, and I've seen it more pronounced in the cosmetics industry, if you see the projection of the women that are meant to be paragons of beauty, to be paragons of beauty, and so you need to make people uncomfortable with who they are so that they might be susceptible to buying the product that you push as the solution to the lack of beauty or whatever you call it. Now, having said that, traditionally many communities and in Kenya there is a community known as the Pokot, look for the Turkana you can even go to the traditional Zulu down in South Africa what they would do? They wove coifers. I think that's a word.

Speaker 3:

Coifers.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, sir. So they would weave the hair of their ancestors into their own hair. So the hairdo. And so Africans had this very long hair which you would find rather unique. Apart from the time of the Mau Mau and the reggae. You know artists from Jamaica and other places Most Africans naturally did not keep very long hair and other places most Africans naturally did not keep very long hair. So when you found extraordinary long hair, it's because they took the hair of their ancestors and it was woven into their own hair. And that is why, when people passed on the ancestors passed on in the ancient days they were shaved clean and that hair sometimes ended up being embedded in the hair of their children and their grandchildren and so on. So there was this understanding that, because of traditional practices, you did not need anything synthetic, because the hair you wove into your head was actually a celebration of the lineage that you grew out of. So it was a kind of a. It's almost like a badge of honor to wear the hair of your ancestors. You know, and look, there's someone who wrote a book called the African Dream Machine and basically the African Dream Machine is the headrest you see traditional communities using, and these headrests were sometimes shaped like stools, sometimes they were found objects like logs, but basically what they did is they never let their hair actually touch the ground. There was no earthing, so to speak, because the ground was the abode of the ancestors. I don't know if I'm making sense. Yes, yes, yeah. So the headrest was an interface that kept your head from touching the ground, which was the abode of the ancestors, because when you then joined the ancestors, they would shave you and therefore your head would be in the ground already.

Speaker 2:

Now back to our story about the aesthetics. So over time, a parallel story is emerging where the hair of initially the Caucasian hair came out as the example of what is beautiful hair. So I remember some of my aunties when I was younger. They used to use a hot comb to make their hair less kinky. So my aunties used to use a hot comb, which they would put in a hot, you know like on a stove, and it would heat up, and then they would use some oil and hair oil and then stretch their hair. So it became very smooth but unfortunately also very brittle. And then, as I grew older, in my own teenage, there was all kinds of products called hair relaxers that meant you didn't have to use the hot comb because there was chemicals now that could do so. In my auntie's time it was a mechanical device in the form of a hot comb, a metallic hot comb. In my time it was a chemical device in the form of a hair gel, but it had the same effect, basically, of making your hair relax and less kinky.

Speaker 2:

And all this is happening with marketing in the background, showing what the ideal hair should look like, and unfortunately it typically looked like a Caucasian hair, except it was black. Meanwhile, in the African-American space, if you recall, in the 60s and 70s, the women were also making their hair look similar. You look at the images from the period, you'll see that they had very Caucasian looking hair. And then we got to the late 60s, early 70s and there was the revolution which was championed by the Black Panthers, where Black Power became a movement, and then Afros really came into force as a form of resistance. So Angela Davis and other powerful women used the afros as a form of resistance, and even the men grew afros, and then it became a fashion statement in the early 80s. I had an afro once, believe it or not, which I nursed for a while before it became impractical to maintain. Anyway, going forward, let's go into the rumblings of an old man.

Speaker 2:

So this issue of hair is a metaphor for sickness. The rural folk, you know these are cosmopolitan urbanites who knew what was happening, metropolitan urbanites who knew what was happening. Now. Fast forward.

Speaker 2:

That time asia was not a player, you know, in the global scene, the demographic, the economic uh shifts that have happened after bricks came into force, and bricks being brazil, russia, india, china and south africa, then we start to see China and India.

Speaker 2:

Their culture and their exports now start to become more visible. So the two biggest sources of hair extensions in Africa, to my knowledge, are from India and also from Brazil. Okay, so because our women still wanted somehow. I think it's almost that this is the power of symbolism. They may have recalled some of the ancestors with very long hair and typically, uh, the hair from india and other places people have much longer hair, a confluence of reasons, but it's all associated with a sense of beauty and aesthetics. And so the market for hair extension grew exponentially and if you look at the statistics today, it's billions of dollars worth, and I think Nigeria leads. Kenya, I think, is not far as a number two and a couple of other regions, but that's easy for you to establish. So now that brings the conversation as to. I hope it wasn't too long-winded because we went all the way to our ancestors and came through my aunties and my generation with Afros and so on.

Speaker 3:

So that's very interesting the way you took us around. So I want to go back to the question of narrative and storytelling whether you see any possibility for some kind of. So there is innovation this way you have shown it's like in terms of how we can use, use the waste from these hair extensions creatively to create products that actually people can use in everyday. But there's also I don't know whether you see, in the other level. We're talking about the imaginaries about beauty and those alternatives, because there are kind of marginal movements. There are. There are kind of marginal movements existing about that are kind of proposing other alternatives, standards of beauty, but they're still marginal. Do you see any kind of possible innovation in that light, in through design, for example, to create other kinds of images, stories and things about that, tell the kind of that, go back to things about that, tell the kind of that, go back to the past and tell different types of stories and get people to imagine differently what beauty is.

Speaker 2:

Indeed, indeed, henry, and I think we live in exciting times because the digital space has given a license, creative license, to a whole new generation. Um, and I think, as we it's, it's almost a kind of um, a strange um, paradox that the more sophisticated and advanced, uh africans become, the more curious they become about their backgrounds and their histories. Uh, it was Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outlier. He said that we are all products of history and community of opportunity and legacy. I found that very powerful. So what happens is we go through this cycle where we grow up seeing things but not ever finding them interesting because they are there, so we take them for granted. Then you go through this whole life cycle and you go to a point in your journey and suddenly it's like wait a minute, the things that I grew up seeing and taking for granted were actually very rich and they gave me a sense of belonging. So what I'm seeing happening is a lot of I would almost call it the Black Panther effect, where Africans are starting to develop a deep sense of pride in things African.

Speaker 2:

I spoke about a group of young people called Leti Arts, l-e-t-i Arts. Leti Arts L-E-T-I Arts. This is a young Ghanaian gentleman and a young Kenyan who have developed some games, video games, using African heroes in the vein of Marvel comic heroes, looking at what is beautiful about our histories, these legends that we grew up knowing, so you'll find Shaka Zulu, for example, is one of the characters, and many other characters some of us may not even have realized actually may have even inspired Marvel comics to start with. So we are starting to see a new generation and because they have become very adept at manipulating the tools of the 21st century, they're able to weave this incredible richness that is in their DNA, intellectually and aesthetically, using the most modern technologies to tell these stories in a way that is instantly, universally accessible.

Speaker 2:

In a way that is instantly universally accessible, and I think what has kept African aesthetics this is now Mugendi, extrapolating from Henry's question what has kept African aesthetics in the margins of curios and very limited art collectors is the fact that it was not accessible to the masses in terms of its vocabulary, in terms of its meaning.

Speaker 2:

Now, with the tools that are available and with the adeptness of our youth in manipulating these tools, they're able to use TikToks and other resources to bring the stories that we told many years ago, do rich animations and tell stories that are so unique that the global market is actually lapping it up, because people are easily bored these days. I think it was Susan Sontag who famously stated that superficiality is the curse of our age. People have seen so much that we've almost become cynical, and unless you say something or do something that is truly unique, then you're not communicating, and so the authenticity that comes from the African aesthetic, I think, is what the world is actually yearning for, because it comes raw, it comes unfettered by the histories that have changed it, and I would almost call it the Ibrahim Traore effect, who is the president of what is that in this context?

Speaker 2:

Okay, so you know about the Ibrahim Traore effect.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

You know that he's galvanized an entire generation of youth in Africa.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Now that confidence. As you know, the name Bukina Faso was introduced by Thomas Sankara, who is Ibrahim Traore's childhood hero. Ibrahim Traore's childhood hero, ibrahim Traore, was born, I think, in 1989, while Thomas Sankara was assassinated in 1987. So Thomas Sankara died two years before Ibrahim Traore was born. So they never met. But same country.

Speaker 2:

This country used to be called Upper Volta before I'm just doing a very quick synopsis and when it was called Upper Volta no one cared or even knew about it. It was sandwiched somewhere near Mali and Niger and there was nothing to write home about Upper Volta. Then this young revolutionary called Thomas Sankara comes around, who was like the Che Rivera of Africa, as they called him, if you remember, the Cuban revolutionary, and he totally transformed, or the Steve Biko, if you like, of his time. Steve Biko was a black consciousness leader in South Africa and he came and challenged Africans to stop looking to the West for their locus. They could look inward and find the richness they had. They're rich in resources. Unfortunately, thomas Sankara was assassinated by his very own buddy, who he led the revolution with, and for a long time. Many of us and I was a young man then and I mourned because I was totally animated by this idea that Africans can actually liberate themselves. They can emancipate themselves and celebrate that which is truly beautiful in Africa without feeling, you know, apologetic about it. Apologetic about it. So Ibrahim Traore now, who is the youngest president in Africa, comes up and comes in the same spirit of Thomas Sankara, and he's doing amazing things. I'd like you just to take your time and just do a bit of research about him, but just to give you a summary, over the last two years, since he became president of Burkina Faso, 18 assassination attempts have been tried, and most of them are coming from the West and over 80% are sponsored by the French, who were the biggest losers after he nationalized the resources of his country.

Speaker 2:

Now, what I was saying about Ibrahim Traore really is about the country of Upper Volta. Upper Volta basically was there's a river called the Volta, so Upper Volta basically was the upper part of that river, and there's a massive dam that is built there. It meant nothing. Thomas Sankara renamed his country Bukina Faso. Bukina Faso means the land of upright men, and the Bukinabe, who are the people of Bukina Faso, are upright people. Now you might ask what is there in a name? And you might go Shakespearean on me and start quoting Romeo and Juliet. But what is there in a name?

Speaker 2:

By moving the name from Upper Volta, which had no meaning or any sentimental value to any of the citizens there, by calling it Burkina Faso, which is the land of the upright people, immediately there's an aspirational quality. There there's a sense of pride. There's a sense of pride, there's a sense of ownership. This is our people, ourselves speaking of ourselves, and so what I'm calling the Ibrahim Traore effect basically is this pride that Ibrahim Traore has rekindled even in older folk like me. I have a son who's 27. He's crazy about Ibrahim Traore. I had no particular interest in Ibrahim Traore, but I grew up idolizing Thomas Sankara, but when I discovered that they came from the same country and they held similar values, somehow our generational gap shrunk to zero, and now we speak proudly about what's possible in Africa, and this has become a transgenerational agenda.

Speaker 2:

So aesthetics, in my view, is going through a similar revolution. People are discovering, like, if you remember Francis Kere, the one who won the Pritzker Prize recently, which is like the Nobel Prize for architecture he did not win for some shiny skyscraper, which is a postmodernist design, no, he won for revisiting his own cultural sensibility. Then you've got someone like Bibi Sek, who has gone back to his communities in Senegal, and Bibi Sek is famous I mean, he's the one who designed the interior of the Renault Megane. So he's an industrial designer that many of us have admired and he went back to his own communities where they have excellent and exquisite weaving techniques and developed a range of furniture with them weaving techniques and developed a range of furniture with them. You have someone like Peter Mabelle, from Botswana, who revisited the African drums and the African headrests that I was referencing earlier on and has come up with amazing furniture and now he's showcasing them everywhere. You have guys like Laduma, who is from South Africa, who developed this amazing knitwear. He's a knitwear designer. Referencing is the Xhosa community, the beadwork of the Xhosa community, where young men would have to have new clothes when they initiated into manhood, and has this amazing knitwear that is again globally relevant, and many others.

Speaker 2:

So I'm just giving a few examples. So there's a kind of a renaissance of sorts that you have this amazing authenticity that we've always had and then you bring in the latest technological possibilities and instantly it's accessible. So you have someone like Esther Machlangu. I think many of you may know of Esther Machlangu from the Ndebele community in South Africa. So she belongs to a different generation.

Speaker 2:

So her she's old school. She paints with an ostrich brush I mean, an ostrich feather is her brush with natural pigments, so she's stuck to that for almost 90 years now. But the younger guys, they have no problem mixing it up, coming up with hybrid solutions, bringing the aesthetics of the communities, but with the technologies of the 21st century. And maybe this is how the future of African aesthetics is going to grow not as pure forms but as hybridized forms which have rich symbolism but at the same time use technologies that are accessible globally. So if it's a 3D printed object, but then it has this amazing aesthetic quality that is uniquely African, and so on. I think I've referenced also the Ghanaians with their fantasy coffins.

Speaker 2:

It might not be a very sustainable solution, but guess what?

Speaker 2:

It's unique and it speaks to their culture and speaks to a global or a universal rite of passage, which is death.

Speaker 2:

So in my view, this is how I see African aesthetics finding expression, way beyond the traditional curios that they used to make and carvings just targeting tourists and actually doing some really wicked things, because I used to know what they were doing that they take a cheap softwood, carve it okay, the carving is still the same and then they apply all kinds of dark varnishes on the wood so that it looks like a mahogany or other exotic hardwood.

Speaker 2:

So it's a kind of a vulgarization of aesthetics, and for me it's important who the audience or the beneficiary of our aesthetic expression is. If it is us celebrating our aesthetic expression for its own sake, that art has an end in itself, then it is beautiful. But if it becomes a means to an end, then it is vulgarized and it becomes cheap and it is ingenuous and it loses its appeal because everyone knows it's a con, ingenuous and it loses its appeal because everyone knows it's a con. So my appeal, then, to those that are in this field is is to seek the authentic and, uh, promote african art for its own sake, not for any other reason your insights also offer us a rich perspective on the evolving African aesthetic and its powerful nature, its powerful force to reshape our environments from art to architecture, to design.

Speaker 4:

As you were speaking, I was thinking it has been this desire, this need to police the African body in different eras, as you have pointed, you know. And then we've used hair also to protest. Hair on the for the african woman has gone through different phases and there is a lot of associations with different, even specific looks that kind of already limit the evolution or rediscovery.

Speaker 4:

You know, going back to the point zero that you're asking us to go to, or to evolve in a direction that is authentic to us uh I'm just saying this so that we have this you know view also as we aspire to this new uh way of expression for for us african women especially when it comes to hair, since we're anchoring this on wasted but that it is a very authentic path to self-discovery and self-authenticity. I do not know if that resonates or what you think about that.

Speaker 2:

There's an unspoken strength that Africans have. They've gone through so much. Other societies would have been totally fragmented and not even known whether they are coming or going. And there's something beautiful there. And if you discover, one of the ways in which we've kept our togetherness actually is through song and dance. And you see what they've done in the US.

Speaker 2:

The jazz came out of the African-American community. Soul came out of there. Soul came out of there. So many genres of music evolved out of the pain that one generation went through and the next generation hybridized it. They introduced new instruments but kept some of the funky tunes and the soul. You know the spirit of the music and now it's globally accessible. So we have templates or examples of how things African have somehow influenced the rest of the world. And the beauty of Africa is we never use force, we use persuasion, and it's subtle persuasion, it's never loud and now we all enjoy jazz. We don't even remember where it came from and it's constantly evolving as new instruments and new technologies evolve. It came from and it's constantly evolving as new instruments and new technologies evolve, but the spirit of syncopation and improvisation and inclusion and participation has not changed.

Speaker 4:

And I think this for me, if you extract those elements, they are universal and eternal, even if the times and the seasons change, and I think that, for me, is beautiful times and the seasons change and I think that, for me, is beautiful and also we will be looking out for for all the other new ways of you know, um, enhancing, uh, african beauty. You know there are stories of you know now hair extensions coming out of banana fiber. You know in yes, thank you In Nigeria and in Uganda. So this new generation of designers, of creatives, are looking inward to the continent to find solutions, to find knowledge, back to our knowledge systems, to solve the problems of today, and that's probably a way of also going back to one's roots and staying authentic.

Speaker 2:

Indeed, I think there's a fiber called raffia, which was used for enhancing beauty and it's totally natural. Sometimes it was applied to hair and I'd really encourage us to do that because, yeah, and the pride that is coming out of rediscovering our richness as Africans, our rich heritage I think there was a dehumanization that went through the colonial exercise and, in places like the US, maybe the slavery, which may have dehumanized individuals and so people felt like second-class citizens and now they're discovering. Actually we are very strong.

Speaker 4:

Thank you very much for using the project Unwasted to widen our perspective and help us have more nuance around African aesthetics and even the design philosophy behind objects, the spaces. Unwasted not only challenges us to look again at what we discard, but it compels us to rethink what we value. As we conclude, are there any final comments that you would like to leave our listeners with?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and this is going to reference Unwasted Eunice, and this is going to reference Unwasted Eunice, unwasted. One of the leitmotifs or the subtle sub-theme that doesn't come through, is that natural is beautiful, and I'm saying this, I'm appealing to the sensibilities of my African brothers and sisters. In our quest to modernize, we may have looked down upon that which is our own richness and beauty. In the quest to extend hairs so that they look more like hairs of other communities, whether Asian or European, we may have forgotten how beautiful our own hair is. Our own hair is natural, which means it is biodegradable. It does not do the things the synthetic hair does. And so our attempts to make something of a bad situation, so to speak, because the hair extensions were already polluting the environment, of a bad situation, so to speak, because the hair extensions were already polluting the environment. So making something good out of a bad situation is not an ideal situation. If we can start natural and end natural, that would be my dream, and the reference there to aesthetics would be stay authentic.

Speaker 4:

Thank you very much. Thank you very much for such a beautiful talk and, to my colleagues, henry and Penina, thank you for being instrumental in getting the best out of this conversation.