The AllianceTaubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning



Who we are
     Africa Alliance is a hub of urban scholars, practitioners, and educators whose work relates to the African continent as both a geographical and an epistemic location. We study buildings, cities, and landscapes on the continent and the many ways in which urbanization processes in Africa relate to other territories. We see Africa as a vantage point to rethink and respond to today’s unprecedented challenges of urbanization: social, economic, and environmental.  



Partners UMAPS
African Studies Center
TV Lab
Unilever Archives
Accra Metropolitan Assembly
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology


Topics of Focus
Archival Justice
How to uncover and preserve primary material on African architecture, and make it available to scholars and local communities


UnformalizationMoving beyond the dominant formal/informal dichotomy through which the built environment is typically studied 


Land Imaginaries How to rethink architecture in Africa based on land, its economies, and ecologies


Oblique Histories How Africa’s exchanges beyond Western Europe and North America are resources of conceptual and design innovations


The Sociopolitics of the Built EnvironmentExamining social class, belonging, and exclusion in and through architecture and urbanism in Africa














Taubman College of Architecture and Planning

AfricaAlliance@umich.edu