Design Week Lagos 2025 : Building systems for Made in Africa
Beyond showcasing objects, at Design Week Lagos 2025, a fundamental question reframed our entire conversation about African design: How do we transform creativity into wealth, ownership, and economic sovereignty ? The answer isn't about showcasing more beautiful objects or securing more global press. It's about building systems.
Sitting with some of Africa's most dynamic design minds—from Myles Igwebuike's thoughtful curation at Njiko to Garreth van Niekerk's + Alan Hayward ambitious platform-building across Decorex Africa, Lucy Agwunobi design manufacturer and Bibi Seck Co-founder of design studio Birsel+Seck —what emerged was clear: African design has moved past the phase of needing validation. What it urgently needs is infrastructure, policy, ownership, and a honest reckoning with how we price, position, and perceive our own work.
The price, value, and perception problem
One of the most provocative conversations at the week centred on something rarely discussed openly: the gap between what African design costs to produce and what the world is willing to pay for it. This isn't a problem of quality, it's a problem of narrative.
For over a decade, I've championed "Made in Africa" on the global stage. But increasingly, I've noticed a troubling pattern: the label carries beauty and storytelling, yet it often signals discount, not premium. When a Western consumer sees "Made in Italy," they expect quality, heritage, and price integrity. When they see "Made in Africa," too often they expect a bargain, a noble purchase, or worse, an item that needs explaining.
The irony is sharp: African designers and artisans possess the skill, the innovation, and the cultural depth that commands premium positioning. Yet systemic barriers : logistics costs that make it cheaper to ship from Africa to Paris than within Africa, lack of IP protection, fragmented supply chains, and pricing pressure from cheap imports, force a race to the bottom.
At the panel, Garreth van Niekerk spoke candidly about this tension. Decorex Africa curates exhibitions for different cities with entirely different energies: Cape Town's relaxed, design-forward coastal sophistication versus Johannesburg's business-driven cosmopolitanism. Yet pricing the same work for both markets, while serving local and global demand, remains a structural puzzle. Add to that the logistics nightmare, flights from London to Morocco are more frequent and cheaper than Lagos to Accra, and you see why African designers often find it easier to ship globally than regionally.
The solution isn't to raise prices arbitrarily. It's to build the ecosystem that justifies them.
From inspiration to ownership
What struck me most across both conversations was a shared urgency around ownership. Not just of businesses, but of narratives, intellectual property, and the value chain itself.
Myles Igwebuike framed it powerfully: African design has too long been treated as a source of inspiration for others to extract and commercialize. When a pattern is appropriated, when a process is imitated without credit or compensation, when a city's aesthetic is packaged and sold by outsiders, we lose not just revenue, we lose agency.
The panel highlighted concrete examples. Ghana's trademarking of Kente cloth is a precedent worth scaling. Adire, Aso Oke from Nigeria or Ndop from Cameroon, these aren't just textiles; they're intellectual property, cultural assets, and economic opportunities that deserve protection through geographical indications, the same model that protects Champagne or Parmigiano-Reggiano.
But IP protection alone isn't enough. Ownership requires control over the narrative itself.
Adebola Williams spoke about this with characteristic candour: "Cities are stories and emotions that influence investment." He shared a striking statistic : a $4.2 billion loss attributed to negative storytelling around African cities and capabilities. This isn't abstract. It directly impacts who invests, who buys, and at what price point.
The antidote? Designers and creators become "billboards for their cities," as Adebola put it. When he wears Nigerian attire globally as a "moving billboard," he's not just making a fashion statement. He's reframing the narrative from outside validation to cultural confidence. He's saying: this is valuable because I value it, and I'm willing to represent it.
Building the ecosystem: four critical pillars
Across both conversations, four interconnected systems emerged as essential to scaling African design from inspiration to industry:
1. Trade facilitation and logistics
The most damning insight: it's cheaper to ship from Africa to Paris than within Africa. This isn't a design problem; it's a policy problem.
Panellists called urgently for operationalizing the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area) and implementing single-window trade systems that streamline customs, reduce bureaucracy, and lower transport costs. Until intra-African logistics are competitive, African designers will continue exporting globally while struggling to reach their own continent.
Internet infrastructure equally matters. Payment systems like Flutterwave and Paystack are enabling transactions; fibre optic expansion across Nigeria is unlocking digital access. But the work is incomplete, and it's foundational.
2. IP protection and local policy
Adebola shared his experience with the music industry : Nigeria's 70% local music radio quota, implemented two decades ago, catalysed an industry. Artists like 2Baba became global because local radio mandates created the demand and infrastructure first. Similar policies : local content mandates for TV commercials, government-led protection for communal heritage, requirements for local designers in public projects and airports, can multiply African design's economic impact.
Beyond policy, individuals and organizations must actively protect their work: trademarks, copyrights, and geographical indications. This isn't bureaucratic overhead; it's sovereignty.
3. Education as exchange, not transfer
One of the most insightful moments came when Lucy Agwunobi, Bibi Seck and Kelechi Odu and others stressed that design education shouldn't produce followers of Western aesthetics; it should produce problem-solvers rooted in local context.
Kelechi Odu spoke about design as "orchestration", a discipline that teaches rigor, systems thinking, and intentionality. When taught this way, design education becomes transferable across sectors and professions, creating entrepreneurs and innovators, not just skilled labourers.
But education must also be reciprocal. I emphasized that designers often work in isolation from supply chains and capture only 20% of value. Platforms and ecosystems that link designers, manufacturers, business people, and markets create a feedback loop where designers learn by doing and iterating.
4. Storytelling, relationships, and community
Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally: design is relationships.
Alan GayWard observed that Lagos is "bubbling" with talent, yet what connects cities isn't exhibitions alone, it's relationships, travel, and understanding local vibes. Decorex Africa functions partly as a fair, partly as a cultural embassy, creating nodes across cities that foster exchange and collaboration.
Myles Igwebuike spoke about "care-based research", knowing rituals, traditions, and core history firsthand, not through academic extraction. This kind of deep listening and authentic storytelling is what differentiates African design from mimicry. It's what allows a designer to create work that resonates globally because it's rooted in something true locally.
Demand creation: the missing link
One insight that deserves its own section: African design lacks internal demand at scale.
Designers often work for export or prestige projects. Local demand remains price-sensitive and oriented toward imports. Reversing this requires intentional policy, local content mandates, government procurement that prioritizes African designers, and crucially, a cultural shift in how Africans perceive African-made goods.
This connects directly back to the price and perception problem. When African leaders, entrepreneurs, and institutions choose African design for their own offices and homes, they signal value. When they default to imports, they perpetuate the perception that foreign is better.
What "Made in Africa" should mean
Here's where my decade-long work on "Made in Africa" converges with what we discussed at Design Week Lagos : the label must signify intentionality, integrity, and ownership—not discount. Made in Africa should mean:
Ownership: Local control over narrative, IP, and value capture
Context: Solutions designed for African contexts, not imported wholesale from elsewhere
Excellence: Premium positioning justified by skill, innovation, and cultural depth
Sustainability: Processes that integrate traditional methods with modern scalability
Collaboration: Regional exchange and cross-city relationships, not isolated production
Transparency: Clear supply chains, fair pricing, and honest storytelling
Made in Africa should never mean cheap, it should mean valuable.
DWL curated pieces exhibited at Nahous Lagos
The path forward
Design Week Lagos crystallized something we already knew but needed to hear together: Africa's creative future isn't about more visibility or more exports. It's about building the infrastructure, policy, and community that transforms creativity into sustainable wealth.
This means:
Accelerating the AfCFTA and intra-African trade facilitation
Protecting intellectual property through trademarks, geographical indications, and enforcement
Implementing local content mandates and government procurement that prioritizes African designers
Investing in education that produces entrepreneurs, not just skilled labour
Strengthening internet and payment infrastructure for seamless transactions
Building platforms and relationships that link designers, manufacturers, and markets
Integrating nature, wellness, and cultural identity into urban design and real estate
None of this is new. What's new is the urgency, the clarity, and the realization that we can't wait for external validation or investment. We have the talent. We have the platforms. What we need is the will to build the systems that let that talent become wealth, for designers, for cities, for the continent.
That conversation at Design Week Lagos felt like the beginning of that reckoning. And it's only the beginning.
Titi Ogufere & Nelly Wandji surrounded by the DWL 2025 team of volunteers
This article reflects insights from Design Week Lagos 2025 panel conversation, including conversations with Myles Igwebuike (Njiko), Garreth van Niekerk and Alan GayWard (Co founders of Decorex Africa / 100% Design Africa), Adebola Williams (Founder RED | For Africa), and a parallel panel on Design and Economic Growth featuring Bibi Seck (Designer ) Astrid Hébert (Director of 3C group), Kelechi Odu (multidisciplinary designer), Lucy Agwunobi (co.founder of TRT Arredo), and myself. Heartfelt gratitude to Titi Ogufere (Founder of Design Week Lagos) for creating such a powerful platform enabling cross-continental conversations. The work continues.