Date. 1st September 2024
The culture of Africa and architecture of Africa is exceptionally diverse. Throughout the history of Africa, Africans have developed their own local architectural traditions. In some cases, broader regional styles can be identified, such as the Sudano-Sahelian architecture of West Africa. A common theme in traditional African architecture is the use of fractal scaling, small parts of the structure tend to look similar to larger parts, such as a circular village made of circular houses.
African architecture in some areas has been influenced by external cultures for centuries, according to available evidence. Western architecture has influenced coastal areas since the late 15th century and is now an important source of inspiration for many larger buildings, particularly in major cities.
African architecture uses a wide range of materials, including thatch, stick/wood, mud, mudbrick, rammed earth, and stone. These material preferences vary by region: North Africa for stone and rammed earth, the Horn of Africa for stone and mortar, West Africa for mud/adobe, Central Africa for thatch/wood and more perishable materials, Southeast and Southern Africa for stone and thatch/wood.
In the 19th century the earth-and-stone palace of the Asantehene, king of the Asante empire at the capital city of Kumasi covered some five acres. It had many courtyards with verandas and open screens and more than 60 rooms with steep thatched roofs. The exterior walls of the palace were covered with rich embellishments in raised clay, patterns that may be related to Islamic calligraphy. Shrine houses were also constructed. Little of the palace survived the Asante wars and a punitive expedition by the British in 1874.
More extensive was the great palace of the oba of Benin City, Nigeria. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was as large as a European town, with many courts surrounded by galleried buildings, their pillars encased in bronze plaques. Roofs were shingled, and there were numerous high towers topped with bronze birds. Benin City was burned by the British in 1897. The Yoruba of western Nigeria are also an urban people. Their towns traditionally have as their centre, the afin palace of the oba, from which radiate broad roads dividing the town into quarters, each with its compound of a subordinate chief. Some afins in the precolonial era were of great size, encompassing much of the surrounding bush, the afin of Oyo, the capital of the Oyo empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, was reported to cover 640 acres. The palace buildings were substantially built, and the open verandas were supported carved caryatid pillars. Yoruba towns still have palaces, though the architecture is often Westernized, traditional courtyards, recreation grounds, and high surrounding walls persist.
The Zimbabwe stone houses built in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Rozwi kings of southern Central Africa were royal kraals, an example being the citadel of Chief Changamire at Khami, Zimbabwe. Ruins at Regina, Nalatali, and Dhlodhlo also in Zimbabwe all display fine mortarless stonemasonry worked with chevron patterns and banded colours. Many African palaces were larger and often bettercrafted versions of the traditional dwelling type, raised on hillocks or plinths. Such were the palaces of the kabaka king of the kingdom of Buganda, including the great barnlike thatched dome with an open reception veranda at Mengo, near present-day Kampala, Uganda. Other palaces were royal compounds, such as that of the fon chief of Bafut, Cameroon, which within a high fenced enclosure contained separate quarters for the older and younger wives, dormitories for the adolescent sons, houses for retainers, stores, meeting places, a shrine house and a medicine house, burial structures for former chiefs, and structures for secret societies.
While many African peoples have kings, not all have resided in palaces, and not all have been divine. Some peoples have no recognized chiefs or leaders at all. Religion, however, plays an essential part in the life of all African societies. Among some, such as the Fali of Cameroon or the Nankani of Burkina Faso, spiritual symbolism informs every part of their dwelling types. Among the moststudied peoples in this respect are the Dogon who live on the rockfall of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali. It has long been believed that the Dogon perceive each dwelling compound anthropomorphically as a man on his side in the act of procreation. The man’s head is associated with the hearth, the stores with his arms, the stables with his legs, the central workroom with his belly, and the grinding stones with his genitalia. From the individual parts of the house to the entire village plan, each element has a religiously symbolic association, and totemic sanctuaries with markedly zoomorphic form are built and dedicated to the ancestors of the living. It should be noted, however, that the scholarship of Marcel Griaule and his followers, who documented the complex cosmogony expressed in such plans, has been open to debate and revision. Among the structures significant to the Dogon are the rounded sanctuaries dedicated to the ancestors, covered with rectilinear checkerboard designs; granaries with wooden doors and locks carved with multiple human figures; and the men’s meeting house, or toguna, a low structure with a stacked millet roof and structural posts.
Monumental temple architecture is rare in Africa, for in animist religions spirits may reside in trees, carved figures, or small, simple shrines. Shrine rooms containing votive objects and dedicated to spirits or ancestors are common, however, like the shrine house of the Asante, with its rooms for an orchestra and the officiating priest, many such houses are similar to the dwelling compound. A more notable structure is the elaborate mbari house of the Owerri Igbo of Nigeria. A large open-sided shelter, square in plan, it houses many life-size painted figures sculpted in mud and intended to placate the figure of Ala, the earth goddess, who is supported by deities of thunder and water. The remaining sculpturesoften wittyare of craftsmen, officials, Europeans, animals, and imaginary beasts. Because the process of building is regarded as a sacred act, mbari houses, which once took years to build, were left to decay, and new ones were constructed rather than old ones maintained. Contemporary mbari structures are formed from cement, and the symbolism of decay and renewal has therefore been lost.
The Olowo's palace, AghọfẹnỌlọghọ, is the largest palace in Africa. It is located in Owo, a local government area in Ondo State, and has been dubbed a national monument by the federal government of Nigeria in the year 2000. The palace features 100 courtyards, called Ugha, that each have a specific function and address a specific deity.
The palace sits on 180 acres of land. It is claimed to be twice the size of an American football field and is used for ceremonies and public assemblies.
Some of the courtyards are paved with quartz pebbles and others with broken pottery. Pillars supporting each roof in the veranda are moulded with statues of a king mounted on a horse or shown with his senior wife.
About 13 monarchs have used the palace since the first Olowo of Owo. TheOba Ojugbelu Arere, Rerengejen, Ajaka, Ajagbusi Ekun, OlagbegiAtanneye I, OlagbegiAtanneye II, Elewuokun, OlateruOlagbegi I, OlateruOlagbegi II, Ajike Ogunoye, Adekola Ogunoye II, and FolagbadeOlateruOlagbegi III.
The Olowo palace is located in the heart of the town, and is surrounded by trees and other artifacts.
The palace was built during the reign of Olowo Irengenje in 1340 and has approximately 1,000 rooms, some of which served as shrines and places of worship of ancestors.
Owo was regarded by many as the political Mecca of Yorubaland before Nigeria's independence. The palace took part in that as the formation of the Action group that transformed from Egbe Omo Yoruba took place within the palace.
The Ritual servitude is a practice in Ghana, Togo, and Benin where traditional religious shrines popularly called fetish shrines in Ghana.It takes human beings, usually young virgin girls, in payment for services or in religious atonement for alleged misdeeds of a family member. In Ghana and in Togo, it is practiced by the Ewe people in the Volta region, in Benin, it is practiced by the Fon.
These shrine slaves serve the priests, elders, and owners of a traditional religious shrine without remuneration and without their consent, although the consent of the family or clan may be involved. Those who practice ritual servitude usually feel that the girl is serving the god or gods of the shrine and is married to the gods of the shrine.
If a girl runs away or dies, she must be replaced by another girl from the family. Some girls in ritual servitude are the third or fourth girl in their family suffering for the same crime, sometimes for something as minor as the loss of trivial property.
This form of slavery is still practiced in the Volta Region in Ghana, despite being outlawed in 1998, and despite carrying a minimum three-year prison sentence for conviction. Among the Ewes who practice the ritual in Ghana, variations of the practice are also called trokosi, fiashidi, and woryokwe, with trokosi being the most common of those terms. In Togo and Benin, it is called voodoosi or vudusi. Victims are commonly known in Ghana as fetish slaves because the gods of traditional African religions are popularly referred to as fetishes and the priests who serve them as fetish priests.
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