CNN’s African Voices Changemakers meets two visionary creators who are shaping global design
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In the latest episode of African Voices Changemakers, CNN’s Larry Madowo meets Titi Ogufere and Jomo Tariku, two African designers who are shaping the creative landscape by blending traditional heritage with modern innovation.
Ogufere is a Nigerian design pioneer and the founder of Design Week Lagos. As the first African president of the International Federation of Interior Architects and Designers, she is reshaping the African design narrative. Madowo spoke to her in Lagos about her roots and starting out in design, “At the time I started interior design it was new. It wasn't something that people even knew what it was in Nigeria, and I had to go away to school in Dublin to get certified […]. We're not trying to do the work of the architect what we do is we design spaces, so the architect does more of the outside, the interiors and do more of the soul and the spirit of the space.”
Inspired by childhood dreams of building homes from imagination, Ogufere was designing long before she was ever formally trained. She tells Madowo, “I used to see houses in my mind and like the Lego, I used to try and arrange them […]. I loved materials, and growing up I noticed the materials, raw materials we had, and I loved the craft of it. I started using some of the materials. So, I'll use steel, I'll use metal, I would use rattan to create and fabricate things in these spaces, and that was how I started.”
For Ogufere, each space is shaped by culture, identity, and function, “I think African designers, or African creators have been creating for a long time. There's a lot of storytelling to this. To be honest, for me, I love any design where there has to be storytelling. And if I had to choose the projects I work on, for residential projects, it's not just enough for me to have a client that says I have a deep pocket. No, I want to be able to tell a story that you can be proud of.”
In 2019, Ogufere started Design Week Lagos, an annual festival and trade show in Lagos that amplifies and celebrates African design. She explains why establishing this was important for her, “When I moved back to Nigeria, one of the first things I did was I established the Interior Designers Association of Nigeria. It was meant to just help to license and identify interior designers and suppliers to create an ecosystem to help the industry. We have done a lot educating the public, pushing, promoting we've done a lot of work, but we need to do more.”
Ogufere is paving the way for emerging artists, with events like her April pop-up in Lagos during homecoming weekend. For her, it’s a celebration of artistry and culture, “Storytelling, you have to go back to even understanding your identity and understanding what you stand for, and a lot of the local craftsmanship, right? I'm beginning to push for us being able to reimagine it today […]. I think that just being able to Get people to rethink and reuse things and the possibilities is one area that I'm trying as much as possible to push and, you know, educate and just see how far we go.”
Madowo also meets Jomo Tariku, a Kenyan born Ethiopian furniture designer whose African inspired creations stand out in a world full of Eurocentric designs.
He explains how for him, design is not just about beauty or aesthetics, it’s also about representation, “My account is about 100 of us practicing now, and this is just a largely black diaspora, and the reason I started researching […]. Whenever I would go to trade shows, I'd be one of a few black designers or black person I would see at these major shows, I did research on it and 0.3% is what I found out from doing that research that these large companies use as designs to license from black designers. Because it's very rare for most of us get that opportunity to work with large manufacturers in a way, that's what led me into building my own.”
From Marvel’s ‘Wakanda Forever’ to the halls of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Tariku’s work has become part of iconic moments in modern black culture. He delves into what this means for him, “It’s a huge honour. I'll be honest with you. What that museum means to me is the history that is archived in there. And the sacrifices made by so many African Americans is why I'm standing here talking to you about my work and the reason why I'm in so many museums.”
Tariku is also a founding member of the Black Artists and Designers Guild, making sure black creatives aren’t just featured during a “moment,” but become part of the canon. He reflects on this future, “I want you to be able to go to any city museum and as part of their collection, you see the black design language being present there. The art and design world tends to be the Me-focused type of practice. It's always, ‘have you seen mine’, it's always about yourself, and hopefully my legacy is I made it more than myself.”
African Voices Changemakers airs on CNN International at the following times:
Saturday 24th May 2025 at 0730 WAT and 1100 WAT
Sunday 25th May 2025 at 0330 WAT and 1800 WAT
Monday 26th May 2025 at 0300 WAT
https://edition.cnn.com/specials/africa/african-voices-changemakers
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