Design Week Lagos 2026: Seven Designers Shaping Africa's Next Chapter

By Priya Raman

Design Week Lagos 2026 ran from 18 to 25 October, and its founder put the agenda bluntly. "The next chapter of African design cannot be about visibility alone," said Titi Ogufere, who founded the festival. "This edition asks what Africa will make next, how we will make it, and how design can become part of a much larger story of enterprise and industrial growth across the continent."

The theme was Making a New Africa: From Material to Market. The venue was Lagos's beret-shaped National Theatre. The format mixed exhibitions, installations, launches, talks, showrooms and creative hubs, with work spanning furniture, product design, architecture, textiles and experimental objects.

What does the festival change for African design?

The shift is from showcase to manufacturing. The All Roads Lead to Lagos touring programme, following stops in Milan and Paris, spotlighted a new generation of Nigerian designers including Nicole Adaora Enwonwu and Athanasius Johnson. It also unveiled its first designer-manufacturer collaboration, with Italian manufacturer Ombré. For a festival that has built its name on visibility, that deal signals a pivot toward production capacity — the difference between a beautiful object on a plinth and one that ships.

Seven designers to watch

Brimet Silva — 'Mocho' stool. Four sculptural supports fold outward like a starfish, framing a circular opening beneath the seat. Fine, repeated striations make the brown surface read as geological. Silva runs a Portuguese practice, and her African roots sit within the festival's diasporic framing of African design as an exchange between places.

Ajayi Kehinde Gabriel — 'Ijapa' chair. The Àjàyí Studio piece mimics a tortoise: a saturated blue shell probes into an undulating seat on thick, curved legs. A side stool echoes the tapered, sculptural language. There's no ornament — silhouette, proportion and colour carry the expression, positioning contemporary Nigerian furniture as product design built for everyday use rather than the exhibition floor alone.

Djakou Kassi Nathalie — 'Mr and Mrs Karaktar' chairs. The Cameroonian ceramicist and sculptor handcrafted the pair from mahogany wood. They carry her signature dense, highly textured style: interlocking abstract faces and geometric tribal motifs.

James Brendan Udom — 'Okkyo' lamp. The Nigerian architect and designer built an anthropomorphic, sculptural lighting piece that is as whimsical as it is functional. It argues, by existing, against the notion that African design objects have to look a certain way.

Nicole Adaora Enwonwu — 'Ànyánwụ́' lamp. The piece draws from Igbo cosmology (the traditional belief system of the Igbo people of Nigeria) and treats light as a living, emotional force. Its sinuous, looping structure is rendered in warm terracotta with contrasting white detailing, setting movement, materiality and light against one another.

Athanasius Johnson — 'Apo' lamp. Part of a wider series, the lamp takes its structural logic from the arch. Its curved glass form connects two grounded points, symbolising strength through shared support. The collection's ethos is stated simply: stability is collective, and light shines through connection.

A memorial within the festival

Studio Contra, a Lagos-based architectural firm, installed 'Bloom Against Violence' inside the National Theatre's perimeter. The memorial pavilion honours children who have lost their lives to violence across Nigeria. Its crimson colour is deliberate — a visceral reminder. The floral-shaped structure borrows from the African courtyard and the architecture of breeze-block screens (perforated masonry that permits airflow), which ventilates the space naturally and creates a protected setting for quiet grief and reflection.

Taken together, the seven projects sketch the festival's answer to its own question — what Africa will make next. With the Ombré collaboration as a template, expect the 2027 edition to weigh manufacturing partnerships as heavily as it does new talent.