A South African architect and Obama Foundation Fellow has embarked on a nearly 1,600-kilometre walk from Durban to Cape Town to raise funds for an AI platform designed to help people design and build their own homes, based on his experience growing up in township housing.
Wandile Mathiyane, CEO and co-founder of Durban-based Ubuntu Design Group, launched the event on April 16 to raise awareness of South Africa's housing crisis and generate funding for Ubuntu Home, a platform that aims to provide people with land, services and AI tools to guide the home-building process.
Born in KwaMashu township in KwaZulu-Natal, Mathiyane spent his early childhood with five family members in a two-bedroom mud-brick hut, where rain leaked through the walls and the limited space made studying difficult. The genesis of the project is based on a more personal memory: his aunt, who was placed on the government housing redevelopment list after an official came to her house and wrote a number on the door, died while waiting for the promised house.
“Our mission is to make home building accessible to everyone, no matter the size or form of their dream,” said Mithiyane.
After studying city and regional planning at the Durban University of Technology, Mathiyane won a scholarship to Andrews University in Michigan, where she completed a bachelor's degree in architecture in 2016 and a master's degree in 2018, focusing her research on affordable housing in post-apartheid South African communities. He launched Ubuntu Design Group in 2015 while completing his graduate studies. He has also lectured at the Durban University of Technology and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and was selected as one of 200 Obama Foundation Leaders from 45 African countries.
Mathiyane has been accepted into Harvard University's Master in Design Engineering program, where he plans to further develop the Ubuntu Home platform.
Their walk began along the Victoria Embankment in Durban and took them south along the KwaZulu-Natal coast through Umgbaba, Scottburgh and Pennington. He is documenting the trip on a blog and said the public response has been significant. On his second day, he remembered that a woman stopped him on the way. “She reached into her dress and pulled out what looked like her last R30: 'Go and make us proud,'” he wrote. “I did not know what to say.”