The East African coast, also known as the Swahili coast, is well known for its picturesque ruins of stone houses, mosques, tombs, and town walls, which dotted the 2000-mile coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique and Madagascar.

The modern separation of Africa into a “Mediterranean” North and a “Sub-Saharan” South had little basis in the historical geographies and political relationships of the pre-colonial period.

Around 5,000 years ago, the Sahara was a lush, humid landscape with a chain of lakes and waterways linking West, East, and North Africa in what is known as the African Humid Period.

Architecture is an aspect of culture that mediates between man and his environment, and it has been one of the first of the arts to adopt new materials and techniques.