A Decolonised African Urbanism Lexicon: Out with the 'Informality’ Fallacy, in with the Pluriversal African Voice

Abstract

The fallacy of conventional urban planning is highlighted with the term ‘informality’ as an ‘appropriate’ Western-centric jargon employed to refer to urban settings of the Global South, and Africa in particular. “Does language matter?” serves as the main theme of this paper, illustrating the lack of African-centric voices regarding urbanand architecture lexicon in a colonized study. And as known, “without a proper name, the knowledge of an object is lost.” The so-called ‘informality’ of the urban south is parallel with the work of James Ferguson, where he referred to “Africa” as a “concept under-acknowledged for its complexity, instead of just as a continent. (Ferguson, 2006)”. Hence, amid rapid urbanisation and development in Africa the urgency to provide an imperative pluriversal African voice when we address ‘Informal Urbanisms’ is pivotal. It argues, that without the latter, it creates numerous impediments, when designing for the “informal” since the term simply describes the inverse of what it is. And that inverse assumes that certain elements do not carry or represent form (Agha, et. al. 2020). This leads to, "How can architecture lexicon be decolonized?" Additional work focuses on ‘Decolonizing Minority Languages Through Language Revitalization’ (Joubert, 2022) where the words "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" (Lorde, 1979) are highlighted. Here, the argument aims to dismantle the beliefs and practices that sustain the concept of ‘internal colonialism,’ which provides light on how colonial dominance interacts with the imposition of dominant language ideologies by centralised powers to oppress regional minorities. Furthermore, "Is it possible to do African philosophy in a language other than the language of the people to whom the philosophical world belongs?”(Ikechukwu Kanu, 2018) This all serves as a beginning point: by developing a pluralistic urban and architectural language and voice, we can ensure that the next generation of 'African Urbanisms' is well-constructed in the African context.