The haughty dismissals of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale by western critics overlook the welcome involvement of African architects, argue Kabage Karanja, Stella Mutegi and Patti Anahory.

It can be said that nothing important or thought-provoking lacks controversy. This year's Venice Architecture Biennale serves it in plenty if we go by the criticism directed at the curatorship of professor Hashim Sarkis and his team as well as the many works produced by a diverse range of participants.
These criticisms include articles such as Carolyn Smith's critique in the Architectural Review, titled Outrage: The Venice Biennale Makes a Mess and Oliver Wainwright's review in the Guardian, headlined A pick 'n' mix of conceptual posturing.
Edwin Heathcote's review in the Financial Times was titled Full of words, questions and stuff. Roberto Zancan's piece in Domus, titled Biennale, Stop Making Sense! at least presents a more balanced reading of the event, but yet with a sobering conclusion.
Our unapologetic positioning as Africans in this response to these criticisms cannot be understated, especially when considering architecture's poor heritage of representation of diverse thoughts and practices of people seen to be "below" the enlightened global North.
This year's biennale discusses urgent topics that we, as a global society, need to address if we are to build a more egalitarian, inclusive and ecologically conscious world
Broadly speaking and without too much posturi...