Architecture and Development

Ayala Levin examines how Israeli architectural aid in Africa was shaped by settler colonial ways of seeing and acting. Her focus is the years from 1958 to 1973, a period when Israel maintained its most productive diplomatic ties with African states.

During those years Israel presented itself as a developing country offering an alternative path in the rivalry between wealthy and poorer nations for aid and political influence. Through case studies of prominent state projects in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia, Levin shows how architects, town planners and a construction firm owned by a labor union cast Israel as a hub of expertise that belonged to neither bloc. Paradoxically, these figures drew on their experience in Palestine and reframed it as a counterpoint to Western colonial know-how.

Levin also follows Israel's role in reshaping governance, education and agriculture across the continent, and the choices African leaders made to partner with Israel in forging South-South connections. The book offers a fresh account of architecture as a means of postcolonial development and of how development resources were gathered and put to use.