Togo: A Country of Resilience

Togolese architect and anthropologist Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou advocates a neo-vernacular style that influences his work as an innovator, designer and entrepreneur at the scale of the product, building and city. 

He is the founder of L'Africaine d'Architecture, a collaborative platform for research and experimentation on issues of African architecture and cities.

In his work Color of the Dump, Sénamé explores the problem of e-waste which is often disposed of in African cities.  Electrics from the Western world are brought over and dumped in huge sites across the continent.

While the work critiques the dumping of waste in Africa,  Sénamé also looks at the people who re-use the waste. 

As he states: '' Scavengers collect small, recoverable resources from the waste and earn a living salvaging and selling them. These people are obliged to use fire to uncover the value in the dumps. They burn away the covers to reveal the parts that can be saved.''

Sénamé goes on to say  ''this shows great resilience and resourcefulness, and this represents Togo to me.

Extending the metaphor further, Sénamé compares this eco-system of waste to revolution stating ''It is only when this waste material burns that the value is revealed. In some ways this is the way a revolution works. There must be violence before there is peace. Destruction before there can be growth.''