As hospital spaces and infrastructure grow in rapid demand across Africa due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Cape Town-based exhibition space builder, in collaboration with an event organizer, has offered to work with governments and private sectors across Africa to rapidly build hospital infrastructures and shelters.
The project titled Afrika Umoja is an initiative by Cape Town temporary architecture specialists, HOTT3D with pan-African energy event organizer Africa Oil & Power (AOP) aimed at tackling the COVID-19 threat by applying HOTT3D’s design, construction and project management expertise to building medical facilities within days, in potentially any location across Africa in collaboration with government, the private sector, and local entrepreneurs.
According to Liam Beattie, Managing Director of HOTT3D, as the effect of COVID-19 bites harder, there is a need to redeploy architectural skills into quickly building temporary emergency medical infrastructure.
“The coronavirus pandemic has had a dramatic impact on companies in the events industry globally, but these highly skilled people and organizations can be redeployed. Instead of designing and building complex exhibition and conference infrastructure, we are now able to very quickly design and build temporary emergency medical infrastructure” he says.
On his part, James Chester, Acting CEO of AOP expressed his excitement at the prospect of collaborating with HOTT3D on Afrika Umoja by providing marketing, communications and outreach support to its network of partners,
“It’s exciting to be able to work with HOTT3D, as we have done for exhibitions & conferences in Angola, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan, and South Africa for years, on providing national and provincial governments with solutions for the challenge of building high-quality medical facilities and accommodation, wherever they are on the continent,” he said.
They have therefore invited provincial and national governments and firms interested in building or funding temporary medical buildings and shelters to collaborate them.
