Blueprint is the New Black: Welcome to the Blog

Blueprint Africa is an interior styling consultancy specializing in African aesthetics. My goal as its founder is to appreciate all the ways in which rural-urban, poor and rich, trendy and traditional collide into the chaotic kaleidoscope that is everyday African living. I will bring you the best of African living as your go-to interior stylist, art director and all around curator of beautiful things and places. Specifically, on the blog I will use our most loved spaces – our living rooms, our restaurants, our hotels – as a means of unveiling another side of the African story.

What You Can Expect from the Blog

Blueprint Africa’s blog gives lovers of global chic interiors inspiration and insight into what is trending in African design. Insights on where to shop. Tips on where they could find an interior designer who gets that their diesel generator might need its own garage. Information on emerging African interiors brands, behind the scenes footage of photo shoots I am directing. Possible rants on the travails of doing business in the creative space in Africa. Interviews with top product designers and architects. How-to tutorials and tips, travel adventures and much more.

How Did I Get Here

Do you know what I found when I searched “African décor” on Google? Zebras, leopards, and gazelles! WTF?! As if animals are all there is to the entire continent. African design should be a reflection of us, how complicated and diverse we are as a people. We are much more diverse than what comes up in a Google search. Out of that initial WTF moment, the idea for Blueprint Africa was born.

Also a poverty avenger, (development banker sounds so dry right?) I spent years advising small and medium-size businesses on project finance. Admiring their hustle and grit, I was inspired this year to become one of them. It was not hard to know what kind of business I wanted to start. Every self-help feel good autobiography and affirmation Instagram post tells you to follow your passion. Mine has been design and writing. Even though I studied finance and went into banking to the cheers of my Ghanaian father and Ivorian mother, I would not stay up at night watching Bloomberg TV or CNBC. I stayed up looking at pictures of sofas.

Africa the final frontier of Wanderlust

Africa is a continent of contrast. Opulence amid dirt roads, miniskirts in the mist of charismatic churches, skyscrapers in the mist of ‘dumsor’.  Since my return to African soil in 2010, I have gotten to know this continent on a more intimate level.  Africa is my home both literally and figuratively.  Blueprint Africa is my homage to my roots and my people.  If this continent inspires you, stick around for your blueprint to Africa!

Let me know what kind of stories and profiles you want to see in the comments!

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