Introduction
For a long time, the story of African design was told by people outside of it. What counted as sophisticated, what belonged in a museum, what was worth collecting; those decisions were rarely made by Africans themselves. We've been paying attention to how that's changing, and what we keep noticing is this: the most exciting designers on the continent aren't looking outward for inspiration. They're going inward. Into their own cultural histories, their own materials, and their own craft traditions; and asking a simple but powerful question: what could this look like today?
The work coming out of that shift is some of the most compelling design we've seen anywhere. Deeply rooted, completely fresh, and impossible to ignore. With that in mind, here are 7 brands we think you should know about.
Ilé Ilà (Nigeria)
Ilé Ilà, which means "House of Lines" in Yoruba, was started by architect Tosin Oshinowo in 2017 to celebrate her native Yoruba culture. Oshinowo is already well known in Lagos for her architecture practice, but Ilé Ilà is where things get personal for her.
The brand makes period-conscious furniture with a contemporary African sensibility, handmade in Lagos, with West African fabrics and hardwoods at the heart of the brand's identity. The material you'll notice most is Asò-Okè, a hand-loomed Yoruba textile with deep cultural roots, wrapped over chairs made from Nigerian teak. Each piece is named using Yoruba words drawn from the themes that inspired it: Àràbà meaning "aged tree", Òkín meaning "the majestic peacock." Nothing is random. Everything means something.
Hive Earth (Ghana)
Founded in 2017, Hive Earth is an Accra-based construction studio that builds using rammed earth, a technique that compresses layers of earth, gravel, clay, and lime to create walls as strong as concrete, built to last thousands of years. The people behind it are husband-and-wife team Joelle Eyeson and Kwame Deheer, united by their love of eco-friendly construction and a desire to bring traditional African building methods back into everyday use.
Their guiding philosophy is Sankofa, the Ghanaian principle of going back to your roots to move forward. They drew inspiration from traditional earth construction across the continent, from the cone-shaped mud homes of Cameroon to the brightly painted Ndebele homes of South Africa. The walls they build are layered with texture, pattern, and natural colour, and they look unlike anything else being built today.
Salu Iwadi Studio (Nigeria/Senegal)
Founded by Toluwalase Rufai and Sandia Nassila, Salu Iwadi is a cross-cultural design studio that believes African objects carry stories worth telling in contemporary form. The studio works across furniture, objects, and interiors, making pieces that draw on the visual languages and craft traditions of West Africa.
Their Patewo Chair, named using a Yoruba hairstyle, and their Zangbeto Table, which references the masked spirit figures of Benin and Togo, show exactly what the studio is about: taking something rooted in deep cultural knowledge and making it into something you’d actually want in your home. Salu Iwadi is young, but the vision they have is clear, and the work is compelling.
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Altin Studio (Tunis, Tunisia)
Altin Studio was founded by interior designer Yasmine Sfar and civil engineer Mehdi Kebaier. The name comes from the Arabic word Al-Tin, meaning earth or clay, a clue to everything the studio stands for. They design limited-edition pieces made entirely in Tunisia by applying new techniques to ancient crafts.
The materials they use say a lot: sea rush, palm wood, and Sejnane clay; a Berber pottery tradition that is over 3,000 years old and recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. Everything is sourced locally and made by artisans across the country, many of them women in rural areas who have practised these crafts for generations.
By connecting these traditions to contemporary design, Altin Studio is helping keep them alive in a way that actually makes sense economically, and the objects they produce are genuinely beautiful.
Don Tanani (Cairo, Egypt)
Don Tanani was built around one question: what would ancient Egyptian furniture look like today if it had developed on its own terms, without centuries of outside influence? Lead designer Lina Alorabi has spent years working on that answer, and the results are actually quite striking.
Their pieces are hand-carved in wood and inlaid with camel bone and gold leaf, drawing on pharaonic mythology and Egypt's ancient visual culture. The studio also produces limited-edition works that sit somewhere between furniture, sculpture, and cultural objects; things that feel like they could be in a museum, but are made to be lived with.
Don Tanani has been featured in Architectural Digest, Wallpaper*, and Elle Decor, and was named to the AD100 in both 2024 and 2025, a big deal for a studio with such a specific, local vision.
Jomo Furniture (Ethiopia/Kenya)
Born in Kenya and raised in Addis Ababa, Jomo Tariku launched Jomo Furniture in 2017 with a collection of hand-sculpted wooden chairs and stools inspired by traditional African symbols and forms.
His designs draw on Africa's cultural heritage, historical structures, traditional furniture, craft, colours, artifacts, landscapes, and wildlife. For example, The Meedo Chair is shaped like a hair pick, which is a symbol of Black pride. And the Boraatii stool reimagines traditional Ethiopian headrests. The Nyala stool's legs resemble antelope horns. Every piece tells a story.
Tariku's work is now in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, LACMA, the Denver Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His pieces also appeared on the set of Marvel's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Counterspace (South Africa)
Counterspace is an architecture and research practice founded in Johannesburg in 2015 by Sumayya Vally, focused on developing a design language for the African continent through built work, research, publishing, and teaching. Counterspace's work is rooted in hybrid identities, particularly African and Islamic conditions, both indigenous and diasporic.
Vally pays close attention to the parts of a city that tend to get overlooked like the informal markets, the community gathering spots, the spaces that don't make it onto official maps, and uses them as the starting point for her designs.
Conclusion
All of these brands share one thing. None of them are using African heritage as decoration. They're not adding a pattern or a motif to an otherwise Western product and calling it African. They're building entirely new design languages from African foundations, and showing that those foundations are rich enough to go in any direction. Reviving heritage this way isn't just meaningful culturally. It creates real value, and it keeps skills and traditions alive that might otherwise disappear.
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