The uses and limits of architecture as soft power in Africa’s international relations

Buildings are powerful expressions of political power that describe and project ideas about hierarchy, state authority, solidarity and modernity. On the African continent, some important buildings have been gifted to governments as an outcome of their international relations. However, these ‘gifts’ have subtle undertones of soft power. This special section contains four articles that describe four different cases – schools in Ghana, Obafemi Awolowo University campus in Nigeria, the Zimbabwean parliament building and the National Mosque in Ghana – of projects that were respectively built directly by Britain, Israel, China, and Turkey or by their agents. In this issue, we speak of the mitigation of African agency, often reflecting the interests of the political elites and their allies, and how that agency influences a building’s outcome and challenges wider understandings of agency that have always characterised Africa’s international relationships.