Get Guardian on GoogleNigerian architect and urban designer Dr Stephen Ajadi has won the Industry Excellence Award in the global category at the 2026 Global Entrepreneurship Festival in Cairo, for his contributions to architecture, urban development and urban security research.
The multi-award-winning architect received it at the festival’s gala night on Sunday, 8 November, at the JW Marriott Hotel Cairo. The 3-day festival, held under the auspices of Egypt’s Prime Minister, Dr Mostafa Madbouly, was its third edition, after Akure in 2024 and Accra in 2025. The organisers described him as an important emerging continental voice in the design of cities, recognising his research into the relationship between spatial planning and security.
Receiving the award, he said: “It is much appreciated, and it is more of a charge to do even more. The world needs new and better places for its inhabitants to live and thrive.”
Ajadi’s work spans architecture, urban planning, development economics and security, from single buildings to city-scale plans. He is the founding principal of Ruban Architecture Office, with clusters working out of Lagos, Abuja, Maiduguri and Monrovia. He also directs its research and design think tank, the African Contemporary Institute of Design. His practice works across architectural scales, from housing for the displaced to high-rise buildings, to the design of districts and entire cities.
A key aspect of his work examines how the organisation of physical space shapes vulnerability to conflict and violence. His doctoral research in Land Economy at the University of Cambridge included the largest ethnographic study of its kind in the region. Combined with in a new unique way with spatial analysis, his work showed how the layout of informal markets and public spaces in Northern Nigeria exposes communities to violence, and how design and planning can reduce that vulnerability. The research has since informed practical approaches to safer markets.
He was Field Principal Investigator for the city-systems group in Maiduguri under the African Cities Research Consortium, a five-year, $32 million programme covering 12 African cities. He led 32 researchers on the city’s urban systems.
His impact has also extended to learning institutions. He designed the full undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum for the new Department of Urban Design at the University of Lagos. He also created and taught a course on African urbanism at the Architectural Association School in London. He founded an initiative for African Urbanism, a platform connecting research and institutions on African cities. He also created the charity organisation called the Penumbra Space Foundation, which plans social and physical infrastructure for communities affected by conflict and displacement.
Ruban’s current projects include the Lagos AirTrade District, a proposed airport business district near Murtala Muhammed International Airport, and Kanem Creative City, a masterplan and development blueprint for Northern Nigeria. He is also redesigning pedestrian systems using algos as part of a $2.6m Wellcome Trust-funded project aimed at reducing the heat of non-motorised transportation in the city of Lagos. Ajadi recently delivered the third prestigious Akin Mábògùnjẹ́ public lecture on the trajectory and future of African cities, where he showed how African cities are at the centre of the world’s new urban shift.
