This is a manual, not a solution. It is written for those who face the challenge to build the next 100000000 dwellings in Africa. As a matter of fact, this will be the people themselves and some few private or public initiatives. This work is directed at community leaders who struggle with finding solutions for housing their people and at African politicians as well as practitioners and students of architecture and urban design who are confronted with the overwhelming task to build yet another set of thousands of units here and there and actually almost everywhere. This manual does not formulate a utopia. Rather it promotes some common sense in the age-old art of building houses and cities. 

Obviously, it is inappropriate to reduce the complexity of housing millions of people to a brief collection of patterns, a development of some typologies and an application of findings as presented here. But, in reality the simplest truths are often ignored and a reminder of some basic insights like this manual might be helpful. 

In today‘s cities in Africa one finds the most obscure situations. Humongous new estates are planned regardless of topography. Supposedly low-cost housing finds a market in the upper levels of society. Dense inner-city slums are demolished in the name of densification only to be replaced by even less dense, more expensive multi-storey buildings - ¨for the poor¨. In brand-new buildings one sees animals being slaughtered in the corridors for lack of suitable open spaces and access to ground floor. One hears the mighty sound of pounding coffee and spices and fears for the flimsy new concrete constructions to collapse under the combined power of African women! 

As the practice of planning the tomorrow of African cities postpones problem solving until ¨maybe tomorrow¨ it is the most favoured playing field for experts in wishful thinking. The dream of modernization often leads to a misinterpretation of modernism as an image instead of modernity as an attitude. With this manual we intend to promote the latter, thus changing perspectives on housing and cities, and developing solutions for its inhabitants as they are and will probably remain to be. We aim to stimulate design thinking where designers would be most needed but can least be afforded.

Finally, we would like to dedicate this work to those who survive the reality of African cities under circumstances often beyond human imagination.

There are many publications on housing and urbanization in Africa. A lot is circulated in the global scientific community but has almost no resonance beyond campus walls. There are also countless studies shelved in ministries and development agencies across the continent that reach no audience on the ground. Municipalities are confused by regular policy shifts caused by changing donors and regimes. The very few African architecture and urban design schools produce almost no research. University libraries are usually empty. Bookshops are rarely found. 

This is a publication on African housing and urbanization meant for mass distribution in Africa. It aims at a direct communication with those who are actually building the future African metropolis under most challenging circumstances. But it does not impose a solution, rather it helps finding one. 

Therefore, this manual is produced and distributed like open-source share-ware. It can be downloaded and printed out with any computer or copy machine - supposed there is electricity, paper and toner availiable. It should easily reach all places where housing is a collective undertaking: capitals and towns, suburbs and slums, farms and mines, universities and municipalities. It can be exhibited for further distribution and discussion. It can be altered, adjusted, changed, expanded, optimized, mutated and so on. 

This manual can grow - just like a city.