In 2022, we started a pilot project, Find & Tell Elsewhere, by collaborating with the custodians of the papers of the Sudanese architect Abdel-Moneim Mustafa to examine his significant interventions in Khartoum and surroundings, and his role in the architecture of nation building in Sudan. We recently launched the second edition of this project, in collaboration with Warebi Brisibe and a team of scholars discovering material related to early Nigerian Independence architecture. On 5 July, Martien de Vletter will present this project at the University of Witwatersrand as part of the Ongoing and Emerging Themes in African Architectural Practice and Discourse conference.

With Find & Tell Elsewhere, our intention was to find ways to engage with this material, to make it visible and available for research rather than to acquire it, and at the same time to support local historians and researchers in sharing their work globally. In particular, we question if the future of the institution is still and only “to collect and give access” or if it also can be “to research and give access.”

Other members of the CCA Research Network, also presenting their research include, Ikem Stanley Okoye, Warebi Brisibe, and Ramota Obagah-Stephen (Multidisciplinary Research Program: Centring Africa 2019-2023), Murray Fraser (Multidisciplinary Research Program: Architecture and/for Society 2014-2015), and Elisa Dainese (Visiting Scholar 2018).