Amechi Mandi and Kelechi Ejikeme

After more than a decade as a lawyer at powerful banking firms such as Goldman Sachs and Société Générale, Nigerian-British Kelechi Ejikeme left the corporate world to follow her passion for interior design.

His collection of fences is inspired by the varied landscape of Nigeria – rolling hills, meandering rivers, lush savannahs and dense forests, and reminds me of an aerial view.

“So, if you translate that into a carpet or rug, it’s symbolic,” he said when I met him at his stall at the decorex interior design show in London last month.

“It’s like, minute by minute, this is what we’re actually going through every day.”

Made of jute, a durable and eco-friendly material, each piece combines these natural features.

Jute is mainly grown locally for its edible leaves, not the fibers. It comes from the same plant used in ewedu soup, a staple food in southwestern Nigeria.

To bring his vision to life, Ejikeme produces his rugs in India and Nepal, where jute is widely developed into a thriving industry.

Also present at the event was Amechi Mandi, a Cameroonian-Nigerian interior designer who won the Rising Star magazine’s House & Garden award in 2022.

She wasn’t showing any of her work but was recently speaking on the sidelines about her transition from fashion to interior design.

Mandi has a degree in furniture and product design, but after working in the fashion industry and later in a design company, she became dissatisfied with the lack of authentic African-inspired textiles.

Often, he found, they rely on “clichéd”, post-colonial motifs.

This led him to explore his Cameroonian and Nigerian heritage, focusing on pre-colonial cultures.

Seeing the untapped potential of traditional fabrics fading into memory -especially with the rise of “ankara” wax prints, a European import that came to symbolize African design – Mandi is determined to revive these cultural elements.

He began incorporating traditional techniques and patterns into his designs, and his work now includes a popular collection of cushions and throws, as well as successful wallpaper collaborations.

“People have told me, ‘Oh, your work is not African,’ because they want to see the Ankara prints. It has been very impressive in their minds,” Mandi told me.

“I get inspiration from traditional customs and traditions, and give it a modern twist,” he added.

Listening to Mandi made me realize how far I had come in associating modern African design with ankara fabrics.

This fabric has dominated African fashion and design, making it stand out on world stages in recent decades.

Therefore, as I wandered through the exhibition, it was easy to imagine that African designs were absent from this remarkable gathering.

When he started, Ejikeme combined both law and interior design, working on one during the week and the other on weekends. It didn’t take long for him to realize where his true love was.

“In another world, you try to hold your power or yourself or your speech so you don’t ruffle feathers, while in another world your power, you can’t even turn it off,” she said.

Since jumping into design full-time six years ago, he has tackled a variety of projects, from homes and workplaces to movie sets.

Last year, he launched his ragu collection, adding a new dimension to his work at his Swallow and Tea studio.

“It’s really new and I’ve only had two shows but so far I have a lot of residential and retail buyers mainly from Europe maybe because my first show was in Belgium. Decorex was my first UK show,” said Ejikeme.

The majority of Mandi’s customers are Europeans, a trend she attributes to the preference among many Africans for foreign products.

“The majority of Africans still prefer to buy Gucci,” he said.

“I have a few Africans who buy but they are not like everyday Africans. They were all people who were born and raised abroad and deeply immersed in the culture and traditions of Africa.”

Both Ejikeme and Mandi agree that the internal structure of Africa is still in the stages of development.

In contrast to fashion, which has long been focused on Africans and has recently experienced significant growth, the field of African interior design is beginning to stabilize.

Ejikeme conceived of his first independent project in 2013, coinciding with the new wave of Africans in London entering high-paying fields such as investment banking.

He aimed to create spaces that were not only luxurious and comfortable but also attracted his African clients a sense of home, showing their heritage in a meaningful way.

“I was surprised because I’m an antique lover. I love old design. When I was at design school in London, my favorite thing was the history of design, like studying all the different periods – Victorian, Edwardian, etc – and what distinguishes one from the other.

“But there was no such thing in Africa. There is nothing like the history of African projects because we have not kept that track,” he said.

This realization prompted him to start dissecting African design periods in order to better understand and preserve the evolution of continental design, an ongoing project he started during the last 10 years living in Nigeria before returning to London last year.

Ejikeme visited places like the Bogobiri art gallery in Lagos, which displayed a mix of ancient sculptures and modern art.

He also visited vendors in the quiet corners of Nigerian markets, where he found office workers used by Igbo elders in pre-colonial times. He began to categorize the objects he encountered according to their time in history, whether it was the late 1990s or pre-colonial.

He is not finished yet and wants to devote more time to it to use in his interior design projects.

Mandi believes that following trends in the way we design our homes and other places has historically never been an African thing, especially during the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade.

“Traditionally, the interior has never been a priority. We have always been working. We have been very focused on decorating our exterior, such as painting the walls, painting the exterior,” he said.

“Each civilization has evolved, but we haven’t had the chance to evolve because of 400 years of being tied to the Atlantic slave trade.”

He added that Africans were “always flying” during the slave trade, so “how can you think, ‘I have this house, I have to make an interior fine, let me put that bench, let me weave this cloth’? society never had the opportunity to evolve that way .”

Both Ejikeme and Mandi noted that many rich and prominent Africans, from celebrities to businessmen, often have interiors that are not distinctly African.

However, Ejikeme believes this is changing as more Africans earn income, they are increasingly investing in decorating their homes in a way that tells their personal story and captures their experience.

“If you have a product that can be made beautiful, beautiful, and memorable, that tells a certain kind of story or has a certain meaning, it will appeal to Africans and other non-Africans,” he said.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian journalist and author based in Abuja and London.