A South African architect and Obama Foundation Fellow has embarked on a roughly 1,600-kilometer walking journey from Durban to Cape Town to raise funds for an AI platform designed to help people design and build their own homes, drawing on his own experience growing up in township housing.
Wandile Mthiyane, CEO and co-founder of the Durban-based Ubuntu Design Group, set off 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 the KwaMashu township in KwaZulu-Natal, Mthiyane spent his early childhood in a two-bedroom mud-brick shack shared with five family members, where rain leaked through the walls and limited space made studying difficult. The project’s origins trace back to a more personal memory: his aunt, who had been placed on a government housing redevelopment list after an official came to their home and wrote a number on the door, died while still waiting for the promised house.
“Our mission is to make homebuilding accessible for everyone, no matter the size or shape of their dream,” Mthiyane said.
After studying town and regional planning at the Durban University of Technology, Mthiyane secured a scholarship to Andrews University in Michigan, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 2016 and a master’s degree in 2018, focusing his research on post-apartheid affordable housing in South African communities. He launched the Ubuntu Design Group in 2015 while still completing his undergraduate 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.
Mthiyane has been accepted into Harvard University’s Master’s in Design Engineering program, where he plans to further develop the Ubuntu Home platform.
His walking journey began along the Victoria Embankment in Durban and has taken him south along the KwaZulu-Natal coast through uMgababa, Scottburgh and Pennington. He is documenting the journey on a blog and said the public response has been significant. On his second day, he recalled a woman stopping him along the route. “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.”
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