Long criticised as overcrowded and filthy, the city’s Zando marketplace has had an elegant and sustainable redesign
S
elling vegetables was Dieudonné Bakarani’s first job. He had a little stall at Kinshasa Central Market in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Decades later, the 57-year-old entrepreneur is redeveloping the historic marketplace that gave him his start in business to be an award-winning city landmark.
Bakarani hopes to see the market, known as Zando, flourish again and reopen in February after a five-year hiatus. The design has already been recognised internationally; in December, the architects responsible for it won a Holcim Foundation award for sustainable design.
“I started out getting vegetables from Goma and selling them in this market. I never expected to be the one rebuilding it decades later,” says Bakarani.
