Designing for Development in Africa: A Critical Exploration of Literature and Case Studies from the Disciplines of Industrial Design and Development Studies

As pressure to access African resources and explore new market opportunities increases in light of a diminishing Western resource base, saturated markets and troubled economies; it is a priority for African designers to gain a better
understanding of the broader and context specific issues of development. This paper explores the disciplines of Development Studies and Industrial Design in order to critically identify approaches to development best suited for African design interventions. Academics and practitioners in Development Studies tend to support one of two camps, the first, a highly critical post-Truman concept of development as a Capitalist agenda to access new markets and the second a more humanitarian approach to an equitable increase in quality of life for all. When exploring industrial design, products regularly become too style focused and fashionable, leading to increased redundancy while forgetting the ethical and political implications of design. Additionally industrial designers have been criticised for their take on development by creating products either designed with a misguided sense of charity, or designed for those in need, but remotely and without an understanding of cultural contexts. Similarly in recent conference proceedings claims of “design trawling” were raised against designers working for big corporates in impoverished communities highlighting possible hidden “Imperialistic agendas”. This raises the question of how designers should balance seemingly contradictory good intentions and commercial interests in order to create a more democratic notion of design. Many of the critics of design do not doubt its power to create positive social change and there are many documented accounts of very successful products created for a more equitable society. This paper firstly introduces a history of development and design and then utilises the recent publication Design and Social Impact: A Cross-sectoral Agenda for Design Education, Research and Practice (Smithsonian Institution, 2013) in order to identify gaps and challenges in current approaches to social impact design. This paper then specifically compares some of these issues under the banners of participation, and monitoring and evaluation by utilising literature and case studies drawn from the historically older discipline of Development Studies in comparison to literature and case studies from the discipline of Industrial Design. The aim of this is to identify approaches and methods for development best suited for designers in Africa.