Interior designers across the African region have called for stronger policy frameworks and industrial regulations to govern the continent’s interior design industry, address its widening skills gap and unlock its job creation potential.
Noting that the industry has the capacity to create many jobs, they said that while they needed technical partners along the value chain, there was also a need for the sector to be regulated due to the important role they play across the continent and their contribution to the GDP.
They made the call at the maiden African Interior Design Congress (AIDC), hosted by the Interior Designers Association of Nigeria (IDAN) in partnership with the African Council of Interior Architects and Designers (ACIAD) and Design Week Lagos (DWL), where they spoke on the theme ‘Interior Design and Society — From Policy to Practice’.
President of IDAN, Jacqueline Aki, said the Congress reflected the association’s deep commitment to advancing interior design across Africa, stating that the partnership was to redefine design as a force for policy influence, economic development, and cultural expression.
In regulating the sector, she said steps are taken to speak to building frameworks that would also build the society. The move, she said, would lead to building a framework for the regulation of the industry as well as institutionalising it with the government.
Aki, who is also a co-Convener of AIDC, said: “Design is not a luxury; it is infrastructure — the human interface of every national plan. What we build today through policy and practice will define how Africa lives, learns, and competes tomorrow.”
Emphasising Nigeria’s role as the continent’s launchpad for design leadership, she added: “The same ingenuity that drives our music, our fashion and our film must now reshape our built environment. From Lagos, a city that never sleeps, we send forth a signal of intent that Africa’s design future will be imagined and executed by Africans.”
Founder, ACIAD, Titi Ogufere, said governments needed to create policies that would support the industry, highlighting the challenge of the skills gap as a major challenge.
To help address this, she hinted at the launch of the Institute of Professional Interior Designers. According to her, Africa has not really paid enough attention to shaping the future for tomorrow. She urged that, as designers, they must be intentional in shaping the industry
“The skills gap is huge; we have to get technical partners. Because the way it works in countries like Italy and China was that they came together, that supply chain has to be there.
We know there are skills development programmes in the country, but we need technical help because we don’t have them here.
“The job of the technical partners is to train in the incubator programme and help them with the design programme on product thinking and understanding materials, which is such a major challenge in our industry, and all these things are all around us. We look at these things and can develop them,” she said.
In his keynote address, President of ACIAD, George Washington Karani, who spoke on ‘The Role of Interior Design in Africa’s Development, said it was high time for the government to design spaces for Africans and not western infusion, by exporting Africa to the world, if it wants to build Africa.
However, he hinted that the setback was a regulation. He said interior designers are one of the employers of labour, as everyone is connected along the value chain.
According to him, there are so many elements guided by interior designers. He urged the participants and all critical stakeholders to ensure they got the industry regulated for prosperity.
