For a long time, the mud hut has been a typical symbol of African architecture. Many an artist’s imagination has been fired by its thatched roof, small size, dull or brightly coloured walls and inhabitants.
The sight of a house without cement, steel roof, glass windows, real doors and hard bricks has also provoked various types of reactions from onlookers ranging from surprise, pity, ridicule to disgust.
Fortunately, the housing situation is slowly changing in Africa despite the widening gap between the poor and the rich.
Nowadays, it is increasingly not rare to see sprawling mansions or villas standing alongside tin shacks in low-income neighbourhoods.
Meanwhile, the medium cost red brick wall house with its corrugated-galvanised iron roofing has equally found its undisputed niche in townships and villages that only once boasted of unsightly tiny mud huts and nondescript houses.
Here, you will find a worksheet with some of the typical houses that you will frequently come across when you travel across the African continent today.
Take a closer look.