Unlike many other parts of the world, Africa has comparatively little surviving historical architecture. There are exceptions, like the extraordinary Coptic churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, which were hewn out of the living rock by 13th-century African Christians. Early travellers from Europe gave accounts of African cities, including a 16th-century description of the splendid palace of Benin (Nigeria) with bronze birds on its steep roofs and plaques decorating its entrance. But a number of towns were destroyed by Europeans during the “struggle for Africa” in the late 19th century. One remarkable ruin is the walled “acropolis” of Great Zimbabwe, built in the 15th century. In plan it is not dissimilar to a large, traditional mud-walled compound but it owes its survival to the use of stone in its construction. Generally there is little stone building on the African continent, and the use of less permanent materials means that most examples of African traditional architecture have been built in this century.

It is evident that traditional African architecture is shaped by many inter-related factors: the climate, the physical environment, the material resources available, and the social systems and economies of its 5000 peoples. So, for example, the nomads who live in the desert, with its occasional oases and thin vegetation, have to move frequently with their flocks or camels. As permanent dwellings are inappropriate, many nomads live in tents, varying in profile, size and structure. The membranes are made of woven cloths, grass mats or skins, sewn together and stretched over pole frames, like the tents of the Tuareg tribes of the central Sahara. When the group moves to fresh, if sparse, grazing, the tents are dismantled and carried by the animals.

Not all nomads use tents: in the southern desert of the Kalahari, the San (Bushmen) live by hunting animals and gathering berries and roots, their dwellings being temporary brush shelters. There are hunter-gatherer peoples in the forests, like the Mbuti (pygmies) of Zaire, whose leaf-covered domes last for several months. Semi- sedentary cattle-herding peoples like the Maasai of Kenya build manyattas ? circular settlements of dung-plastered huts. Some of the peoples of the African grasslands build large, hooded Council houses, covered with trimmed thatch. Others build with grass: the Zulu indlu is a domed dwelling like a finely made inverted basket.

Forest-dwelling farmers in Central and West Africa have the timber to make more substantial houses. Timber-framed roofs have rafters and purlins lashed in place with bark strips and then thatched; side walls of poles are packed with mud, their surfaces mud-plastered. Rectangular in plan, many have pitched or hipped roofs; so do the houses built by the Asante (Ghana) with layers of packed red earth. These dry rock-hard, though the walls are subject to erosion in the tropical rains. The extremes of climate often cause deterioration, but although many of the structures are impermanent, the building traditions endure, meeting the needs of their occupants.