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The Business of Foreign Aid: Nordic Architecture in East Africa, 1960-1970
ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship, ETH Zurich,
2022-2024
2022-2024
While the ethical, economic and political aspects of foreign aid have been widely discussed in developmental studies literature, the ways in which the business of foreign aid had materialised through buildings and infrastructural projects across the continent, particularly in the decade of the 1970s, still remain largely overlooked. This research project is specifically interested in the architecture of Norwegian aid programmes in the 1970s in East Africa, particularly in Kenya, Zambia, and Tanzania. Norway, along with other Nordic countries that consistently top the global charts of developmental assistance, led this effort in constructing new building typologies associated with the “Western” concepts of modernity and welfare: housing, education and healthcare. Administered under the auspices of public organisations dedicated to advancing international development, these flagship projects, built with prefabricated systems and new materials, were consistently sold as vehicles of “empowerment” and manifestations of “building with” instead of “building for” the people. In practice, however, producing these systems and materials meant new and highly lucrative business opportunities to Nordic industrial producers, who were in the throes of severe market shrinking at home.
This project thus sets out to investigate this Janus-faced duality between idealistic aspirations for a better society and commercial pragmatism inherent to Nordic foreign aid architectural projects in 1970s East Africa, a duality that can also be found in any publicly-funded and privately delivered construction venture today. The research will be structured around three case studies, each tackling a different building typology and method of cooperation. These cases will be investigated through archival research, site visits and oral interviews. Project output will include a series of peer-reviewed research papers, an exhibition concluding the research, and a print publication.