A run-down structure standing on Ross Road once served as an important institution in Freetown’s history. Fourah Bay College’s original building, now a national monument, has evolved several times since its creation in 1845. The evolution of this iron-trimmed, four-story building made of laterite blocks in many ways represents Freetown’s own evolution. What began as Western effort of ideological expansion became a center of West African educational and societal advancement. The effects of the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1999 and a fire shortly afterward have left the building in poor condition. Today, it serves only as a reminder of its past cultural significance.

In 1827, the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) created a grammar school in Freetown known as The Christian Institution, then developed it into a training center for ministers. Its name changed to Fourah Bay College when this building’s 1845 construction began in the Clinetown neighborhood under the supervision of its first principal, by Rev. Edward Jones, an African-American from Charleston who graduated from Amherst College. Timber from slave ships was repurposed to form the building’s roof. In this way, the journey of the Liberated Africans was represented as a story of resilience and prosperity. Imported glass fashioned its many windows, including dormers on the top floor.

Its first student was Samuel Ajayi Crowther (ca. 1809-1891), a Nigerian-born Yoruba enslaved when he was about twelve, and rescued by the British Royal Navy’s West African Squadron for resettlement in Freetown. Fourah Bay emphasized Classical studies, and Crowther studied Greek and Latin, as well as Temne. He taught at the school for some time, then became a missionary in Nigeria, famed for his Yoruba translation of the Bible. His facility for languages led him to also create primers in Nupe and Igbo, and he became West Africa’s first Anglican bishop, completing a doctorate at Oxford University. Christian Cole, another Fourah Bay graduate, had already become Oxford’s first African graduate in 1876. He later became the first African lawyer practicing in the English court system. Numerous other Yoruba graduates of the school became prominent missionaries and education leaders in Nigeria.

CMS was responsible for the management and cultural metamorphosis of the Liberated Africans, freed West and Central Africans the British transported to the colony from their interceptions of other nations’ slave ships, once they had ended their own participation and began to suppress the slave trade.

CMS felt it imperative that the new British colony be founded on Christian morals and Western traditions and intended that Fourah Bay College should serve as a self-supporting Christian center, served by members of Sierra Leone’s own clergy. Fourah Bay College drew students from other colonies, including what are now the nations of Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria.

Eventually, Freetown developed into a stronger community as the Krio settlers—freedman of mixed African backgrounds who left British colonies in North America and the Caribbean, as well as London itself—and Liberated Africans began to intermingle. This growing sense of unity motivated CMS to advance further, and educational issues became a topic of discussion. Citizens desired a place of learning where one could obtain a full university degree. In 1874, Reverend Henry Seddall documented the impact of higher education on society. He stated that “educated Africans are beginning to long slip away from their European leading strings, and they are proving themselves perfectly capable of discharging all their duties as citizens, and as Christians without foreign aid.”

In 1876, the college became an affiliate of England’s University of Durham, and it remained the only West African tertiary educational institution until World War II. Those Freetown citizens who were former slaves or their descendants had entered a new class of educated elite.

Fourah Bay College’s legacy was significant throughout Anglophone West Africa, since many of its graduates established educational institutions in Nigeria and elsewhere. The British colonial government did not establish even an elementary school in Sierra Leone until 1908, so the CMS and other missionary efforts spoke to a cooperation between church and civic efforts for development.

During WWII, the university was temporarily relocated to S. B. Thomas Agricultural Academy outside Freetown, then was moved to former army barracks in the Mt. Aureol neighborhood of Freetown from 1945 until 1962, where its current buildings were constructed.

The university’s move away from Clinetown changed the original building’s function. In 1945, it became the Sierra Leone Railway Corporation’s headquarters, then in 1980 served as a Magistrate Court, falling out of use a decade later. During the Sierra Leonean civil war, it housed citizens displaced by the conflict.

Since 1999, it has remained a roofless ruin, although squatters made their home there, despite missing wooden floors and board windows. The Bunce Island Coalition, a group that proposes to restore that island’s slave fort, had wanted to use the building for a future museum about the slave trade, but has abandoned these plans.

Since 2012, the Sierra Leonean Office of the Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs has sought to have the building placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, but it remains on the “tentative list.” In late 2017, the Sierra Leonean Monuments and Relics Commission—which had remained moribund for some time after the civil war—cleaned the site, removing vines and other vegetation that were attacking the building’s surface. Unfortunately, they have returned and are actively destroying the structure. The laterite stone is breaking down due to chemical weathering because of heavy rainfall, high temperatures, high humidity, and the salty air from the nearby ocean.

Hope that restoration funding will be forthcoming remains alive.

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In the heart of the Fez Medina is one of the largest mosques in Africa, as well what many consider the world’s oldest operating university. Al-Qarawiyyin (also known as Al Quaraouiyine or Al-Karaouine) was established in 859 C.E. by Fatima Al-Fihri, the daughter of a rich merchant. She and her family had migrated from the Tunisian city of Kairouan, about 1464 miles east of Fez. After her father died, Fatima and her sister Maryam inherited a large amount of money. Fatima decided to establish a place of religion and religious education, naming it after their hometown. Within two years,  her mosque and madrasa, or Islamic college, was finished. It became a place of political discussion and expanded to teach mathematics and the sciences. The original mosque was relatively small—just 98 feet long. In the 10^th century, it expanded considerably, its square-shaped minaret becoming a trend-setter.  The mosque’s appearance today was set in the 12^th century under the Almoravid dynasty, whose Moroccan-based empire extended to Spain and Portugal (al-Andulus): 21 aisles, muqarbas (the medieval Western Islamic equivalent of muqarnas) or honeycomb/stalactite/cell vaults, horseshoe arches, and inscriptions on the ijmiz, the rectangles that surround the arches. The muqarbas includes the Almoravid motif of an eight-petalled flower enclosed by an eight-point star within an octagon, just one aspect of the region’s fascination with geometric relationships. Two styles of calligraphy are present: complex floriated Kufic script and the new and still somewhat clumsy cursive style. This latter emulated the writing used in Baghdad, the caliphate the Almoravids venerated and from which they derived legitimacy, and was probably transmitted via the extensive correspondence exchanged between the polities. Additional changes in the mosque took place in subsequent centuries. The most significant took place in the courtyard. Its blue and white tile floor, marble ablutions fountain, and its two fountain pavilions, positioned like those of the Andalusian Alhambra’s late 14^th-century Court of the Lions, were added in the early 17^th century. The mosque’s exterior is unassuming, except for its tall minaret and its green-tiled roof, created as a series of gabled rows. The interior, however, includes intricate wooden, plaster, and marble carvings, as well as zellij tile decorations, helped create a heavenly shift from the busy markets that surrounded it, and the courtyard and its fountains alluded to paradise, as did water-filled features elsewhere in medieval Islamic states. Because Al-Qarawiyyin is in the Medina quarter of Fes, it is part of a World Heritage site, and must be maintained to keep its integrity.  In 2008, architect Mohammed Fikri Benabdallah completed the restoration of the mosque, an effort that culminated in his nomination for the 2010 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Sultans bestowed gifts upon the university, enabling the creation of a vast library that drew many students and scholars. The world’s oldest working library, its contents consist of four thousand manuscripts, including a 9^th-century Quran and an original copy of Ibn Khaldun’s influential 14^th-century Muqadimmah, a critical examination of history using political and economic viewpoints. In 2012, the library the Canadian-Moroccan architect Aziz Chaouni was awarded the project of renovating the library according to a four-year plan. When she first entered, the library was in disarray, with damage to the floors and even a fallen chandelier. What concerned her most was the state of the manuscripts. Chaouni created a humidity and temperature control room.  She also added a new gutter system to prevent further water damage to the building, as well as air conditioning and solar panels, and the library reopened in 2016. Even in the past, the attraction of both mosque and university outstripped Al-Qarawiyyin’s ability to accommodate students. Many other madrasa sprang up in its immediate vicinity, including the 13^th-century Saffarin madrasa (intended mostly for students from southern Morocco) and the 14^th-century Al-Attarine madrasa. Both had elaborately ornamented courtyards and public spaces, but plain, overcrowded student accommodations.  Al-Qarawiyyin still functions as mosque, library, and university, but UNESCO’s preservation of the Medina prevents physical expansion at the original site. Today the university has four other Moroccan campuses: Agadir covers Sharia law, as does a second location in Fez; Marrakech is the center for Arabic Language Studies; Tetuan houses the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy; and the original madrasa is the site of Islamic education.  

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When the government of Western Nigeria established the University of Ife in 1961, the country was only a year old. When classes commenced the following year, Unife had the opportunity to proclaim the modernity of the young nation through its breadth of studies, as well as its appearance. The University controverted late colonial views concerning tertiary education. The Western Region had hosted the University of Ibadan since 1948, and by 1959 plans were underway for the North to construct Zaria’s Ahmadu Bello University and the Eastern Region to build the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The British had recommended Lagos as the next university site, but the Western Region decided they needed a second university outside the capital. They considered numerous potential cities, and their chosen architect, Arieh Sharon, suggested Ile-Ife should be selected. In 1960, Sharon and Nigerian planners toured universities in many parts of the world, considering design, planning features, and suitability of architecture to site. Levin suggests Sharon was particularly impacted not only by the schools he examined, but by the spatial arrangements of Maya centers in Mexico—tight, interconnected complexes surrounded by lush greenery, with several buildings conceptualized as inverted pyramids.

Arieh Sharon (1900-1984), a well-known Israeli architect, designed the university in 1961. A number of African institutions looked to Israel in the early years of independence, partially because it had rapidly created a progressive nation with original cultural attributes, and partially because its climate was closer to that of Africa than many European countries. Sharon had trained at the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s before moving to Tel Aviv where he created numerous government buildings, kibbutzim, and communities. He brought experience in designing for hot climates to Nigeria, as well as intimate familiarity with Modernism—the latter a way to reshape the image of Africa as a forward-moving continent. His OAU buildings varied in their dates of construction, but are made mainly from concrete, designed to accommodate the tropical climate and sun exposure, with ventilation provided through open hallways and stairways.

The Main Core is the pedestrian-only heart of the campus and features both administrative buildings and general student service spaces. Its composition was originally planned for the Secretariat, the Assembly Hall, the Hezekiah Oluwasanmi Library (named after OAU’s second vice-chancellor), and four Faculties--Humanities, Law, Administration, and Social Science. All were arranged around a green quadrangle and interconnected through paths, the uneven terrain necessitating terraces and ramps. Jutting rooflines and roofed walkways afforded protection from both sun and downpours in the rainy season. The Humanities buildings were erected between 1963 and 1965, their stark shapes resembling reversed pyramids. The strong horizontals of their cantilevers visually link them to the nearby library (1966). The Secretariat (1968) was designed to house the university administration and act as a student center; a non-objective sculpture acts as a gate to the Modernist structure. The Faculty of Education Building (1970) echoes the shape of the Humanities building with another upside-down pyramid design, but its proportions differ. Like many of Sharon’s Israeli structures, it is raised to promote air circulation below the building. The Assembly Hall (now Oduduwa Hall), constructed from 1972 to 1976, is the Core’s most flamboyant building. Designed with an adjacent amphitheatre, it has a dramatic shallow-steps approach from the plaza. The main building holds 1400, while the amphitheatre can house a larger audience of 3500. Its exterior includes organic forms in white against a darker concrete. While this pattern is not particularly Yoruba, it is pseudo-African in its abstraction, part of a limited intent to make the architecture site-specific. Other Sharon inclusions, such as the concrete column and striated surface treatments, are also intended as references to the ancient city that became the university’s home.

Sharon was also responsible for the early residence halls (1964), but construction did not cease with the completion of his work at OAU with his son Eldar Sharon, Harold Rubin, and AMY Ltd. Later University structures by other architects followed his Modernist lead. Notable additions include the Faculty of Health and Sciences building, which exemplifies repetitive rectilinear designs from neutral tones such as brown and ivory, and the locally-dubbed “Spider,” the Civil Engineering building.

One of University’s most notable buildings is its Natural History Museum. Its existence was first broached in 1971, but it was not finished and commissioned until 2011. Designed by architect Patrick Ehinmowo and his firm Platform Concept Ltd., it is one of the most adventurous and notable Modernist museum exteriors in West Africa. Its very geometric design emphasizes the triangular and pyramidal roofing, which recalls the upside-down pyramid designs of the Faculty of Education and Humanities buildings. The exterior’s neutral browns further tie it to Awolowo Hall and the Health and Sciences building, among others. The museum includes taxidermy specimens, 20,000 plants within a herbarium, and archaeological specimens from Ife.

Apart from its varied architecture, OAU’s landscaping keeps it from being a series of concrete islands. The buildings are integrated with the surrounding palm trees via numerous green spaces that surround the main structures. Concrete expanses are even broken up by small framed triangles of grass.

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