Advancing Afrikan Sustainable Design

In a monoculture-dominated world, this chapter explores what an endogenously inspired conception of Afrikan sustainable design might be. The authors initially contextualise the incompatibility of growth-based human development versus the limited resources of a finite planet. This is followed by a brief exploration of postwar development and its recent refinement into the Sustainable Development Goals. These concepts are compared to the similar parallel emergence of the discipline of industrial design and its refinement towards more sustainable approaches to design. This leads to an exploration of what an Afrikan conception of sustainability might be, with a particular focus on the indigenous Afrikan philosophy of Ubuntu - the inseparable relationship between people and the natural environment. With a decolonial lens, product design examples from the Afrikan context are used as exemplars of how indigenous approaches to knowledge creation, situated within an Ubuntu framing, could translate into more appropriate Afrikan design practice and education.