The African Fabbers Schools is an innovative educational project that combines research and design, technological innovation and traditional culture. The school has found a permanent home in Douala, in southwestern Cameroon, after traveling to several African countries – Morocco, Ghana, Mali, Burkina faso and Senegal – for more than 10 years. We deepened the themes and ambitions of the school with its initiator and director Paolo Cascone.

What are the needs from which the school was born?
The African Fabbers School (AFS) was born from the scarcity of design and architecture schools in Africa and the absence of European research programs on these issues. I’m talking about projects that go beyond the rhetoric typical of humanitarian initiatives and old-fashioned cooperation.  

The AFS derives from a journey that began almost 15 years ago. Initially, it was an itinerant initiative that reached various countries including Senegal, Morocco, Mali, Burkina Faso… Ours is the first digital manufacturing laboratory for architecture and design in Africa.

The school offers the connection between “advanced” cultures and vernacular knowledge. Africa is a continent that, despite its colonial aftermaths, is growing economically at a phenomenal rate. In order to respond to this development, new cultural and productive processes are needed, intercepting local needs.

Who are your teachings directed at, and to what kind of community do you want to support?
The richness of this project lies in the fact that we created a network of actors operating between Europe and Africa: regional and art institutions, prestigious universities and artisan cooperatives, NGOs, private foundations and individuals interested in the project.

Our main interlocutors are small craftsmen or young people who would like to study design and architecture, but we also have requests from European students and researchers who would like to develop their research with us.

AFS is an educational program designed to generate small businesses and imagine new circular economies. We want to give a long-term perspective for the development of sustainable and replicable housing solutions and urban micro-infrastructures.

What kind of projects are carried out?
Over time we have conducted very different initiatives: we mostly worked on creating microarchitectures to serve native communities; we taught artisans to build their own off-grid printers; in Dakar we helped open the first fab-lab in Senegal in a neighbourhood of artisans.

In Cameroon, we have just completed the first phase of a permanent laboratory, so we will have the opportunity to develop a more articulated program. From 2019 we will work on the project for the construction of the extension of the creative hub with exhibition spaces, classrooms... the construction site will involve companies and groups of students who will self-produce a series of components thanks to the new laboratory just installed.

At the same time, after studying the very rich local building culture, we decided to start looking after two important supply chains: earth and wood. Cameroon is one of the major exporters of wood for Italian and European design; here we also find some incredible examples of rammed earth architecture: the musgum buildings, with their typical catenary shapes.

How can traditional skills and values be combined with western and advanced tools? Isn't there a risk that the technique will prevail over the indigenous culture?
There are many studies that testify to a great familiarity with the digital technologies of the new African generations. It is sufficient to look at the mobile phone diffusion maps to understand how fast the digitisation process in these countries is. What distinguishes these phenomena is informality, and it is in it that we need to investigate in order to develop economic models capable of supporting themselves in osmosis with their territory.

As Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr says, we need to “think about African economies in their cultural substratum” to avoid the mistakes of the past. This does not mean renouncing the opportunities of new technologies, on the contrary it is necessary to acquire awareness of the local culture and at the same time integrate the digital culture to develop endogenous solutions.

How much time is spent on handwork and how much time is spent on digital processing? How much time is spent on anthropological research and how much on production?
Schools do not live this dichotomy between manual and digital, or between theory and practice. Rather, there is a continuous interaction between different skills to create that extra value that we have lost in Western society: knowing how to build together. Manufacturing is inherent in the popular culture of many African countries. AFS considers production as a tool for anthropological investigation, as a practice able to keep together disadvantaged social fabrics making a virtue out of necessity.