‘There’s a lot to be built still’: the architect Mariam Issoufou on excavating the past to build Africa’s future

Mariam Issoufou designed a prize-winning library and mosque complex in Dandaji, Niger. All images courtesy of Mariam Issoufou Photograph: Courtesy of Mariam Issoufou

Growing up near the historic mud-brick city of Agadez, Niger’s gateway to the Sahara, Mariam Issoufou was always inspired by the majestic adobe structures around her. The 27-metre-high minaret of the city’s mosque, the tallest mud-brick structure in the world, has stood on the sandy horizon since the 16th century. But Issoufou never imagined that becoming an architect, and building such things herself, was a possibility.

“There were no role models,” she says. “I didn’t know of any architects in Niger, let alone any women in the field.”