Africans at the cutting edge of interior design

After more than a decade as a lawyer at high-powered banking firms like Goldman Sachs and Société Générale, Nigerian-British Kelechi Ejikeme left the corporate world to follow her passion for interior design.

Her rug collection is inspired by Nigeria's diverse terrain - rolling hills, winding rivers, sprawling savannahs and dense forests, and reminds me of the view from planes.

"So, when you interpret that into a rug or a carpet, it’s symbolic," she said when I met her at her stall at the Decorex interior design show held in London last month.

"It’s like, every minute, this is what we're actually every day stepping on."

Made from jute, a durable and eco-friendly material, each rug integrates these natural elements.

Jute is typically cultivated locally for its edible leaves, not for fibre. It comes from the same plant used for ewedu soup, a staple in south-western Nigeria.

To bring her vision to life, Ejikeme has her rugs produced in India and Nepal, where jute is more widely developed into a thriving industry.

Also at the event was Amechi Mandi, a Cameroonian-Nigerian interior designer who won House & Garden magazine’s Rising Star award in 2022.

He was not showcasing any of his work but had just spoken in a side session about his transition from fashion to interior design.

Mandi holds a degree in furniture and product design, but after working in the fashion industry and later at a design firm, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of genuine African-inspired interior textiles.

Too often, he found, they relied on "clichéd", post-colonial motifs.

This led him to explore his Cameroonian and Nigerian heritage, with a focus on pre-colonial traditions.

Recognising the untapped potential of indigenous textiles fading from memory -especially with the rise of "ankara" wax prints, a European import that has come to symbolise African design - Mandi set out to revive these cultural elements.

He began integrating traditional techniques and patterns into his designs, and his work now includes a popular collection of cushions and throws, as well as a successful wallpaper collaboration.

"People have told me, 'Oh, your work is not African,' because they want to see ankara prints. It's been so impressed in the minds," Mandi told me.

"I get inspiration from indigenous traditions and cultures, and then, I give it a more contemporary spin," he added.

Listening to Mandi made me realise how much I, too, had come to associate modern African design with ankara fabrics.

This textile has dominated African fashion and design, making its mark on global stages in recent decades.

And so, as I wandered through the exhibition, it was easy to assume that African designs were absent from this notable gathering.

When she first started, Ejikeme juggled both law and interior design, working in one during the week and the other on weekends. It did not take long for her to realise where her true passion lay.

"In one world, you’re trying to contain your energy or yourself or your expression just so that you don’t ruffle feathers, while in another world your energy, you can’t even extinguish it," she said.

Since making the leap to full-time design six years ago, she has tackled a variety of projects, from homes and workplaces to movie sets.

Last year, she launched her own rug collection, adding a new dimension to her work from her Swallow and Tea studio.

"It’s a really new thing and I’ve only had two shows but so far I’ve had mostly residential and retail buyers mainly from Europe probably because my first show was in Belgium. Decorex was my first UK show," Ejikeme said.

Most of Mandi’s customers are Europeans, a trend he attributes to a prevailing preference among many Africans for foreign products.

"Most Africans still prefer to buy a Gucci," he said.

"I do have a few Africans buying but they are not like everyday Africans. They were all people who were born and bred abroad and are deep into African heritage and culture."

Both Ejikeme and Mandi concur that interior design in Africa is still in its developmental stages.

In contrast to fashion, which has long been a significant focus for Africans and has recently experienced remarkable growth, the field of African interior design is just starting to establish itself.

Ejikeme reflected on her first independent project in 2013, which coincided with a new wave of Africans in London entering high-paying fields like investment banking.

She aimed to create spaces that not only exuded luxury and comfort but also captured a sense of home for her African clients, reflecting their heritage in a meaningful way.

"I was stumped because I'm somebody who loves antiques. I love old design. When I was in design school in London, my favourite thing was history of design, like learning about all the different periods - Victorian, Edwardian, etc - and what distinguished one from the other.

"But there was no such thing in Africa. There's nothing like the history of African design because we haven't really kept that track," she said.

This realisation motivated her to begin categorising African design periods to better understand and preserve the continent's design evolution, an ongoing project she began during her past 10 years living in Nigeria before returning to London last year.

Ejikeme visited places like the Bogobiri art gallery in Lagos, which displayed a mixture of old sculpture and modern art.

She also visited sellers in quiet corners of Nigerian markets, where she came across staffs of office used by Igbo elders in precolonial times. She began categorising these objects she came across according to their period in history, whether late 1990s or pre-colonial.

She has not yet finished and wants to devote more time to it to use them in her interior design projects.

Mandi believes that following trends in how we design our homes and other spaces was historically never an African thing, especially with the centuries of the transatlantic slave trade.

"Traditionally, interiors have never been a priority. We have always been into functionality. We were more into decorating our exteriors, like painting the walls, painting the outside," he said.

"Each civilization has evolved, but we didn’t have the chance to evolve because of the 400 years we were arrested with the transatlantic slave trade."

He added that Africans were in "constant flight" during the slave trade, so "how can you think, 'I have this house, I have to make the inside fine, let me put that bench, let me weave this cloth'? Our society didn't have the chance to evolve like that."

Both Ejikeme and Mandi noted that many wealthy and prominent Africans, from celebrities to entrepreneurs, often have interiors that lack a distinctly African identity.

However, Ejikeme believes this is changing as more Africans gain disposable income, they are increasingly investing in decorating their homes in a way that tells their personal story and captures their experiences.

"If you have a product that can be made beautiful, and exquisite, and sort of memorable, that tells some kind of story or has some kind of meaning, it will appeal to Africans and other people that are not African," she says.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian journalist and novelist based in Abuja and London.