Professor Lesley Lokko

Professor Lesley Lokko OBE is a visionary thinker, cultural architect, and global voice redefining how Africa tells its stories through space, scholarship, and imagination. As Founder and Chair of the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana, and Director of the Nomadic African Studio, she has created bold, mobile platforms that place Africa at the center of architectural thought, education, and future-making across the continent.

Lokko has shaped generations of architects through academia, notably as Founder and Director of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Her intellectual influence extends through seminal works such as White Papers, Black Marks and her editorship of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture, where she interrogates race, culture, and power within the built environment. Beyond academia, she is also an acclaimed novelist, with 13 bestselling works translated into 15 languages, weaving African identities into global literary consciousness.

Her global impact is underscored by landmark recognitions as curator of the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, France’s Grande Médaille de l’Académie d’Architecture, an OBE for services to architecture and education, and inclusion on the TIME100 and BBC 100 Women lists. Through an extraordinary fusion of culture, education, architecture, and storytelling, Lesley Lokko has reshaped global narratives around Africa, earning her AfriHeritage’s African Cultural Icon Award for her enduring influence on African cultural expression, intellectual leadership, and global architectural discourse.